


The Ugly Truth

by TheIncredibleIbex



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anorexia, Eating Disorders, Family Feels, Gen, Historical OCs, Hurt/Comfort, Jedi History, KotOR references, Kylo Ren Redemption, Past Character Death, Present Tense, References to the Star Wars Holiday Special, Suicidal Thoughts, The Force, Vomiting, but only in one chapter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2017-03-04
Packaged: 2018-09-09 14:11:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 41,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8893720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheIncredibleIbex/pseuds/TheIncredibleIbex
Summary: 'Fasting meditation, Snoke explains, drilling every kind of meditation known to Sith and Jedi alike into his pupil, is a kind of Force-strengthening connection achieved by denying one’s self food for several days. There may have been other things following that, but the one that sticks in Kylo’s mind are the words ‘Darth Vader, as Anakin, never managed it for long’ and everything before and after becomes white noise at that point.'Or:Kylo develops an addiction that both leads to his redemption and may kill him in the end anyway.





	1. Chapter 1

It starts off almost by accident, but later, Han will blame Snoke. Kylo will not.

Fasting meditation, Snoke explains, drilling every kind of meditation known to Sith and Jedi alike into his pupil, is a kind of Force-strengthening connection achieved by denying one’s self food for several days. There may have been other things following that, but the one that sticks in Kylo’s mind are the words ‘Darth Vader, as Anakin, never managed it for long’ and everything before and after becomes white noise at that point. His mind focuses in on that concept, on the idea of outdoing the man whose legacy he is meant to uphold. In some ways he is his father’s son; he cannot back down from a challenge.

The first day is easy, barely an annoyance. The second proves a bit detrimental to his balance, makes his lightsaber practice less graceful, his sparring more hit than dodge. On the third he can feel the body his mind inhabits start to genuinely resent him. He is dizzy, he stumbles. The Force is no closer than it once was. He would quit if it weren’t for Lord Snoke’s voice, the look on his face. Snoke never actually says Kylo is failing, that he is faltering at the same point his grandfather did, because he doesn’t have to. Kylo says it to himself as he lays awake the third night with grit teeth. He’s determined to succeed, not just at this but at everything. A deeper connection to the Force could change the outcome of the coming war and the future of the galaxy. He has no excuse to cave in to a base instinct like an animal.

He can’t sleep, so he exercises. He does laps around the training room, forces his body into flips and kicks he has let himself become ill-practiced in, pushes himself until spots float in his vision. The Force will enter him if he has to make it through sheer power of will. When he calls his lightsaber to him he moves like a whirlwind, ignoring the furious pounding of his heart, ripping apart practice droids with a near-blind fervor. Only when he’s washing himself off in the fresher and preparing for a meeting, when the fatigue sets in, does he feel the ache in every inch of himself that begs for just a bite of something, anything. Kylo avoids the mess hall to show up early to a meeting for once, a simple debriefing he barely follows, getting into an argument with Hux over the number of troops needed for a mission, the value of a supply depot, the usual. All the while the pain in his stomach is burning into a new sensation. By the time he leaves, he actually has a spring in his step again, movements quick and senses sharper than they’ve ever been.

Snoke is barely congratulatory. Meeting a bare minimum is hardly cause for celebration. Kylo, high on a euphoric rush, does not need his approval for once. He is a new man, looking at a new galaxy. In the Force he senses everyone, their acts, intents, where they go and what danger they possess, all at once, at all times. He beats his own personal records in training. His aim has never been better, reflexes never so sharp, and before the fall of the fourth night he has decided that the rule about only going far enough to get a breakthrough and then eating need not apply to him. Kylo is not like the Sith of the past. They had other Sith to carry the load, to do what must be done. That is a luxury he will not have until Force users are found, trained, and put under his employ. So if he takes the meal delivered to his quarters and dumps it into the trash, that’s really just to the benefit of the First Order, honestly. No one needs to know what he’s doing. They are not strong with the Force. Their ignorance of it means they could never comprehend the necessity of his actions. It isn’t their fault any more than it was his for being born with the Force. Fate picked who it would. He was just doing what he had to in order to fulfill his destiny.

Kylo runs. He runs, he kicks, he gets back to basics with Captain Phasma, who increasingly has problems wiping the floor with him in unarmed combat. He is just too fast, too full of energy, alert and moving before he himself knows it. They fight to draws for multiple days. He stretches out his reach to people across the ship. His body trembles from time to time as if with terror. Survive, the Force whispers to him. Do not die. His body thinks it is under attack or in some life or death situation and the galaxy unfurls like a blooming flower before him, minds like stars in the dark sky, endless but finally visible. He keeps himself in motion as if he were being chased. On the sixth day he finds food impossible to resist, so he eats, to his eternal shame, a full breakfast that weighs down on his insides like a rock. Kylo knows he has made a terrible mistake. He also knows that food is energy and energy can be spent, can be gotten rid of, so he gets to it and learns all kinds of new punches from another Captain, whom he doesn’t mention to Phasma. He needs to train with more people. He needs to be better. There is too much riding on him for him to think outdoing his grandfather in a single area suffices.

When he’s in his room alone he sits on the floor and feels a chill set into him from some source he cannot place. Having heard the Light compared to warmth many times, this must be the Dark, then, an icy handful of tendrils that lace their way through his veins. He ignores the growling of his stomach in favor of listening to the symphony of thoughts and intentions around him. People are distinct even with his eyes shut now, somehow, as if each wore a unique hue in the eyes of the Force. They can be tracked, they can be read, and when the time comes they can be undone. Kylo slips into their minds through the cracks in their colors, ink dropped into water, and takes over. He is living poison. The First Order advances. Snoke is pleased enough to continue his training, each technique and each idea less intimidating now that he knows his tie to the Force is so strong. His meals are carefully calculated according to rules he makes up on his own. Vegetables are more filling with less energy to work off afterwards. Milk is right out when water does the same job. Tea becomes his new beverage of choice, warm and filling enough to ease him into rest without snapping his Force connection. He learns that the more water he has before he eats, the less he wants to eat when he starts.

There are, of course, problems with his new lifestyle.

The first is his temper. He has never been so quick to anger in all his life, which, combined with his Force abilities, leaves Kylo a danger to every human, droid and object around him. The first time he rips apart a room he is breathless, the Force thrumming through his pulse point, heartbeat in his head, half-dizzy with rage. Snoke is disappointed but not enough to ease up on the pace of his training. Things must be worse than he thought, then. Kylo tries not to, but his starving body is defensive and takes everything as a threat or an insult. He is impossible to work with while also outranking everyone, thus meaning they have to work with him. When he loses it during combat practice and breaks Phasma’s arm, she informs him rank be damned, he’ll need to find someone else to train with. So he does. He has a rotation of people because dealing with Kylo Ren’s temper tantrums is too much for one person to deal with on a daily basis. This is when he learns to catch blaster bolts in midair. The fear and shock in the heart of the man who fired is enough to spur him onward. Let them hate, so long as they fear. Empires do not build themselves.

Then comes the paranoia. The Force is strong in him but it is so because it thinks he is actually dying, so things that are not threats flare up on his radar. Everyone is a potential traitor. If he isn’t actively in someone’s mind he assumes they’re talking about him. They’re all plotting against him. None of them want him to succeed. None of them even know him or what it is to be the last real hope the First Order has of pushing forward and winning. Who gave them the right to judge his life as if they had any inkling of what it was to be the only Force user in the organization besides Snoke? He feels vaguely superior to them, slaves to their physical bodies, curled up over plates of food that hinder their clarity, shoving every morsel down like slobbering banthas. Kylo is no animal, he isn’t some child with no impulse control, and he’ll show them. He’ll make all of them fear him too much to lash out. He will put an end to their threats before they arise.

He finds his robes are no longer fitting as well as they once did, now have excess room between fabric and skin. Kylo is oddly comforted by it. He is hidden, he is there but not there, he is like darkness itself, present where no one can see. In his room he examines himself with great satisfaction. His ribs are easily counted, well-defined, collarbones sharp as knives, even his hipbones beginning to jut out as if in defiance. His bones are armor, armor he is always in, armor that will keep him safe from the gossiping underlings, angry Resistance and even Snoke’s duplicity. When he twists, he can see some of his spine. This makes him frown, because there is still clearly work to be done. Fat clings to him, weighing him down, and he would be faster without it. He needs to be faster. He needs to hit harder. He needs to fold himself further into the darkness until he is a barely glimpsed shadow of death.

Kylo is always cold, so he is always in layers under his robes. He discovers twelve days is the limit of his abilities before even the Force will not save him from passing out. Stubbornly, he waves off the medical droid that found him. This is when Snoke tells him to take care to control himself. Kylo’s ears hear _you are still failing_. He shakes with the effort of not going down to the kitchens and forcing everything he can find down his own throat. He wants to as badly as he fears it. He wakes up with bruises on his legs where his knees knocked against other flesh and grits his teeth, calling heavily upon the Force to get out of bed. As much as he wants to quit, he’s close to a breakthrough, he can feel it, it lurks just behind the corner, just a few days away. He has not come this far to trip at the finish line.

The mission to retrieve the map goes awry due to his weakness. Kylo should know better than to rise to a taunt about his family but he can feel every eye on him, knows that they’ll all figure it out, they’ll all lose faith in him, this man is going to undo him, and he kills him when he isn’t supposed to before he realizes what he’s done. Poe Dameron is the only reason he’s able to salvage the unmitigated disaster, Poe is his excuse to claim he had a plan, to go chasing after the droid. The traitor is at least not his fault, but Phasma’s. It feels good to have someone else make an error he can blame things on, which he immediately does. Hux’s Stormtrooper plan is a mess, Phasma should have escorted the trooper herself, there are a lot of things to take the heat off him and he says each with confidence. He knows even Snoke doesn’t really believe in him, thinks he isn’t capable. Well, fine. Kylo doesn’t need him, he’ll kill him later, when things are more stable, when he’s got a handle on the situation. If he thought he could trip Kylo up by not sending more resources to help with the map, he has another thing coming entirely. Phasma tries to pacify his latest bout of rage with an actual meal on a tray she had some droid bring up and it hits him she’s in on it, she wants him to be weak, to fail, so she can blame everything on him too, just like how Hux is using this to push his weapon agenda forward. He throws the tray and the Captain out of the room with a single movement and the urge to kill is as overwhelming as the urge to run is for several long, tense moments.

Everyone is the enemy and everyone is a monster and Kylo is so angry he doesn’t realize he’s afraid. He tries desperately to contact his grandfather through the Force, since Darth Vader, at least, would not begrudge Kylo the aid he needs in this moment. Instead, a young woman appears before him, her hair done up in a style he has never seen before, a pale blue apparition who places a hand on his cheek with great sympathy in her voice. _“Oh, Ben… you’re just as stubborn as Ani,”_ she sighs. Terrified, he bolts from the room quick as lightning, as if she were a threat to his very existence. He can’t tell friend from foe – does that mean he can’t tell real from fake anymore? What _was_ that? He refuses to go find out. He has business to attend to even as his heartbeat hurts in his own chest.

Rey’s mind being picked apparently wasn’t enough to cow her into submission and if he weren’t always ready to kill something he might be impressed. He can feel the back of his collar press against the top of his spine when he whirls around from the empty chair, feels the Force struggle to keep him going. There is no time for a break to eat now of all times and so he tries to call upon his only other source of strength, tries to summon the Force to him. Rey’s presence has let the Light in, but he can overcome that setback, focus on the Dark, and when this is all over with he can make her pay for deliberately sullying the darkness all around him. Even people he just met want to do him in. There is no one left who doesn’t want to destroy everything he’s worked for. “Find them,” he tells his troops, separating from them before they can stab him in the back as well. If he could he would run this whole place alone. It certainly feels as though he and his armor of bones are alone here. But what else does he need, really?

“Ben!” The voice is familiar, a bark of a name he hasn’t heard in years, and he falters.

He falters and is too tired to walk away again, despite screaming at his legs mentally to move, his bony legs whose thigh tops he can wrap both hands around and fit in his hands, his legs that he burned every ounce of weakening fat from through months of hard work. Kylo is well within the limits of how long he could go without food. He doesn’t understand why his body is betraying him. The Force tells him Han Solo won’t kill him and he’s fairly certain that’s true, yet that’s no excuse for turning to speak to him. Kylo isn’t thinking clearly. That is nothing new. He presses on.

“Han Solo.” Somewhere in the abyss Snoke tries to get through to his head and Kylo can’t hear him over the burning pit of his empty stomach. He tries to remain stoic as Han approaches. “I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time.”

Only Han Solo could manage to sound annoyed at the leader of the Knights Of Ren. “Take off that mask. You don’t need it.”

Kylo’s lips quirk in a mirthless smile. “What do you think you’ll see if I do?”

“The face of my son.”

Ben’s cheeks are sharper, his eyes have dark rings under them, and his skin has taken on a lifeless pallor since he was introduced to fasting. His eyes are dark, shifty, yet dulled over in a way he knows makes people uncomfortable. He likes that, honestly, likes seeing the Han Solo pause for once in his life. “Your son is gone.”

“Snoke is using you for your power,” Han continues, as if Kylo hadn’t spoken. “When he gets what he wants he’ll crush you.” Kylo doesn’t have a reply to that. He knows that. Most people want to crush him, they always have, even when he was a child. That’s why they want him to eat, want him to be vulnerable. He’ll outlast them all. Han meets his eyes. “You know it’s true.”

 _I can handle it,_ he thinks. _I am so much stronger than you know. I am stronger than Vader. I am no one’s toy. I don’t need you. You never wanted me in the first place so I found people that did and climbed to the top of their ladder. I’m fine. I-_

His father’s eyes flicker down and soften at the bits he can see, the arms like pale rods hidden inside giant, empty sleeves meant to be skin-hugging. And something deep within Kylo breaks.

“It’s too late,” he chokes out, quietly. The Force is not all Dark within him now. The Light is trying to drown him. Neither are sustaining him and he wonders if he’s dying.

“No, it’s not,” his father replies, swiftly, moving in closer. “Leave here with me. Come home. We miss you.”

We. Kylo thinks of Leia lifting him into the air as a child and swinging him into her arms, safe and sound. His mind races and it’s hard to breathe. We, a they that includes him. Something is wrong. He can’t remember how to hate them. His heartbeat is in his head, his throat, every part of him, as the walls seem to close in all around him. Maybe he should throw himself off this bridge, save his parents the chaos of whatever this is. Something, maybe someone, however, whispers to him to speak. The voice is honey-sweet and soothing. He thinks of the woman in the room with his grandfather’s ashes. Was she sent by _him_? What is he supposed to do? Surely he can’t turn his back on everything he’s worked for, he’s smarter than that. Surely he can’t stay here and get killed by Hux or Phasma for the sake of a promotion, he’s stronger than that. The room spins briefly, barely. His fingers twitch with a jittery raw energy that threatens to overwhelm him. His father’s eyes are so earnest. It’s been so long since anyone looked at him this way.

“I’m being torn apart,” he tries to explain as the Dark demands he throw this man off the bridge and the Light gently tells him to surrender. “I want to be free of this pain. I know what I have to do but I don’t know if I have the strength to do it,” he blurts out in a rush, voice shaking just once. His helmet falls to the walkway with a loud clang of metal against metal. His thin hands tremble as they detach his lightsaber and hold it out. Even his gloves are too big for his bony fingers now. “Will you help me?”

His father doesn’t even hesitate. “Yes. Anything.”

Kylo releases his grip on the lightsaber and sinks to his knees so suddenly Han doesn’t even have time to step back. Trust him, the Force, the woman, tells him. Don’t turn him away. And he bows his head with the tiredness of someone who has been running on fumes for far too long to keep track. “Get rid of that thing, that instrument of hate. Take me home, please. I… I’m _scared_ ,” he all but whispers the last part, and Han throws the saber into the abyss without another thought.

Strong arms help him to his feet, his light body all too easy to pick up, his ribs easy to feel through three layers of fabric. He can feel fear in his father’s mind even though he isn’t a threat to him right now. It takes Kylo a moment to realize it isn’t fear of him but for him. “Okay. Okay, let’s go home, Ben.”

Shots erupt all around them from Stormtroopers. Kylo catches all of them in midair and redirects them back for a moment, and then Han is yanking him towards the other end of the bridge. Somewhere up above he hears his uncle Chewie yelling, providing distraction and covering fire. It isn’t easy to keep every shot off them. Some deflect by mere inches. There’s too many, or Kylo is too weak, or the Force is just too conflicted within him in this moment to be of use. He stumbles when they get to the other side. His father has to yank him to his feet for them to keep going. Kylo feels something warm filling him up with an odd finality to it, as if this is his last chance before the Force will be unable to propel him forward. They run, and he struggles to breathe because every step is so hard, and it has been two weeks since food passed his lips and every shot deflected might be the last one. He has never known fear like this. The Force moves him until they get to the Falcon. Chewie is accompanied by Rey and the Stormtrooper traitor for reasons Kylo can’t puzzle out. Dots swim in front of his eyes. A white mist almost like snow descends over his vision as he falls, ragdoll, to the floor.

Han locks up. His son’s chest barely moves. “Chewie, is he-”

He can’t say it, but Rey answers anyway. “He’s alive. I can sense him – don’t ask me how, I just can.”

Chewie trills out a confirmation as he checks Kylo’s vitals and directs the two younger humans to stow him somewhere softer. Without wasting time giving more specifics, he gets into the pilot’s seat beside Han, who is doing everything he can to look calm. They share one long, mutually confused and worried look before they turn their attention to the controls.

Kylo Ren is dead. Now it’s their job to make sure Ben Solo survives this.


	2. Chapter 2

He wakes up and everything is unfamiliar and bright.

He’s on some kind of medical bed, softer than what they use in the First Order, well-worn, smelling of bacta and disinfectant. At first, he can’t open his eyes. His eyes are too sensitive. Did he hit his head? Does he have a concussion? Ben can’t remember how to do a self-diagnosis for that. He remembers he lost track of days, he screwed up, he made an error at a critical time, and yet somehow Han- no, his father, accepted his fumbling non-apology. There was blaster fire. After that, everything is blank. His legs feel as if they’re bolted to the bed, his arms too, but there isn’t anything actually strapping him down to it. There doesn’t need to be. Somewhere nearby, he can hear voices. They aren’t quiet, yet his ears take several moments to process what’s being said.

“-you’re telling me he wasn’t eating?” That’s his father’s voice, worried, angry, gruff as ever.

Rey’s is the voice that answers. “When I looked into his mind, all I saw was hunger and training. He was always working, Han. He was too afraid to do anything else, even eat. I don’t know. I didn’t even mean to get into his mind and I wouldn’t know how to do it again if you asked. I couldn’t understand what I was seeing until he collapsed.”

“Kriffing hell,” Han mutters, breathing out a sigh. “How long has he – I grew up in some rough circles, but that’s not-”

He cuts himself off when Ben forces his eyes open, tries to speak. Rey respectfully backs away. Ben’s vision is blurry, he has to blink repeatedly to see anything other than blobs of color, but when he does, he understands why he isn’t tied down. He’s in some sort of cell made into a medbay, a hybrid of necessity with locks and multiple doors and access codes required to get in. He should probably feel something in response to that other than relief that they’re all alive. The Falcon doesn’t have anything onboard to rig it to do this, so they have to be out of First Order space, at least. Other than being thirsty enough to try to make the jug of water lift with the Force and being too weak to stand, he’s actually doing alright. Han has the good grace to roll his eyes at the levitating jug before pouring him a glass, huffing slightly. The water tastes pure, cool on his parched throat, so he gulps down two glasses, barely able to hold either steady.

“Did anyone die?” he asks when he can speak, mind trying to piece the battle together. “Uncle Chewie, I thought I heard him yell.”

“He’s fine. Whining like a dying man, though,” his father replies honestly, getting a snort from Ben, who gingerly lays back down, sitting up temporarily having been a marathon of effort. “Everyone else is dealing with their injuries like adults.”

Ben smiles. Han would be lost without Chewbacca and they both know it. It’s all good natured grousing; if Chewie was seriously injured, he’d be able to tell from his father’s emotions through the Force alone. His Force senses are muted now, extending to the room around him, to Rey and some passersby outside the three locked doors that led to this room. There are other people here, moving about in organized activity, no battles of any kind. He stretches his mind out only to find not a single murderous intent among the lot. Exhaling, Ben glances to his right and finds there’s a machine with some mysterious blue liquid in it attached to an IV going into his arm.

The fact he didn’t immediately notice that is disquieting to both of them. “How long was I out?”

“Three days.” Han settles into a chair by his bed, clearly repurposed from somewhere else, like everything else in this makeshift room. “I thought I lost you back there for a minute.”

He doesn’t know how to reply to that, to the obvious concern. Years have passed since they last did this sort of thing, had these talks, so he just shrugs as best he can. “You didn’t. Does Mother know?”

A nod. “Told her first chance I got over a secure channel. She set this up for you, to keep you safe. The Doc said your immune system might be compromised from malnutrition.”

As if that’s the reason he needed protection. A lot of people wanted Kylo Ren dead for very good reasons. If people knew who he was, he was fairly sure he’d have woken up from the raw hostility and hate rolling off them. He’s been the source of more pain than he knows what to do with. Suddenly, he doesn’t feel worthy of the IV in his arm. Ben wants to rip it out, except he knows his father would stop him. He wants to be sick, except he long ago coughed up even the last bits of stomach acid from his belly. Mostly, he’s just confused on why he feels so cold when the Dark Side isn’t flowing through him like an open conduit anymore. He shivers, glancing around for more blankets. There aren’t any. After a moment of trying to bury his chin under the covers, Ben is startled by his father getting up, slipping his jacket off and laying it atop him. It’s a small thing that helps nonetheless.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, awkwardly. His father runs a hand through Ben’s dark hair, eyes still sad.

His voice is painfully gentle when he asks, “Ben, what were they doing to you?”

“Fourteen days.”

“What?”

“You were asking Rey how long it was since I last ate,” he supplies. Comprehension dawns in Han’s eyes, dark and troubled. “I needed to be stronger in the Force. The Force will rescue one of its’ own.”

His father takes a long, hard look at him. Someone took off Ben’s outer tunic at some point, pushed up a sleeve to make way for an IV. Carefully, Han tucks the covers around Ben’s arms again to block out the cold in what is not a remotely chilly room, chasing away the shivers as best he can. He runs a hand through Ben’s hair again like he used to when Ben was five and refusing to get his hair cut because he liked it being long enough to hide his big ears. He’s trying to put the image of the healthy boy he knew then and the emaciated young man he’s seeing now together. The results don’t make sense. Han had heard a lot of rumors about the First Order, spent nights laying awake worrying, but he’d thought they fed their underlings. This never crossed his mind as a possibility. To be fair, Ben had never thought this would happen, either, and he started it.

“I didn’t have much growing up,” Han starts, stops, then tries valiantly to keep going. “Now, I’m not saying it didn’t make me stronger. Sometimes you need to see just what you’re made of. But that’s over now. You beat ‘em, Ben. You got out of there. I went that long without food, once. Thought I was done for, but I’m still here. And so are you. So you just rest for now, alright? Your mother and I will talk to the doctor and take it from there.”

Ben wants to protest he’s an adult who can fight his own battles. He knows, though, that his father barely ever discusses the life he lived before he was a smuggler, the childhood that he barely survived and that taught him how to lie, swindle, threaten and intimidate. For Han to even admit there was a time he didn’t have it all together is rare. Those days had their cost, high costs, a longer term inability to trust until Chewie came along, then, years later, Luke and Leia managed to break through that barrier, somehow. The damage from that time meant Ben had never known his father had been hungry like that, been starving, been in real danger of not making it. He is humbles as much as he is disquieted by the image of his father as broken, human man in lieu of the legend he is so often hailed as. So if he wants to handle this, his son will let him. He owes him that much. He nods his agreement and his father smiles weakly at him, tired but relieved the worst is over.

He leaves his jacket with Ben, a simple gift that means more than anything has in months. The jacket feels weighty, like a hand on him that does not leave, a lingering embrace. Han will not express through words whatever this is doing to him, but he will take action. That’s just who he is. He fixes problems to make sure the people he loves are alright. Ben has no idea how he didn’t see it before. Eventually he drifts back off to sleep with the scent of his father lingering in the air.

He is loved. He is at peace.

 

* * *

 

 

It does not last.

The smell of food is not what wakes him, because it is far, far away. He doesn’t know how he senses it. The Force tells him where it is and he struggles to get up, to yank out the IV. His arms shake from the cold so he tugs on Han Solo’s jacket. The walls are dull grey with a lack of life, there are distant flickers of gold behind all these walls that are moving, that are people, and somewhere out there, there is the flicker of green to the left. Through those walls and doors and past those people, there is _food_ and _he must have it_. His body moves to the doors where the Force flows through him to blow out the locks, then he is walking, balance wavering between decent and impossibly wobbly, sweating with the effort, not feeling the cold of the metal floors under his bare feet, only the urge to keep moving.  _Food food food._ His head turns, his eyes flicker at the intersection of hallways. The Force tells him where to take a turn in what direction. His stomach hurts, it burns, it is empty and he is hollow and he has to get rid of that feeling, he can’t die, he is _dying_ , he knows he is.

He pulled open the kitchen door, nearly swooned at the smells assaulting his senses. Someone has left some sort of roast something on the counter. He grabs at it as a drowning man would grasp for land. Ben barely tastes any of it, just knows he needs more, more, he hasn’t had enough, he needs something, he needs something or he’ll die, the panic compelling him to fill himself up until he has cleaned an entire serving platter. His stomach begs him to stop but he licks the plate clean, picks off every last crumb, shoves past the pain into a warm contentedness that he has never known before. He’s surprised to find himself on the floor, leaning against the cupboards, exhausted and satisfied. When did that happen? His hands clutch at his full belly, feeling an unwelcome fullness to the normally concave space.

All at once, the euphoria breaks.

No, no, _what has he done,_ doesn’t he know he needs to connect to the Light Side? He can’t afford to be full, he can’t, he can’t rip out his Force connection and risk going back to the Dark Side. Ben’s mind races. He could kill his father, himself, his mother, anyone, with the Dark Side. He knows he would and he wouldn’t even care and he has to stop himself. Why did he do this? How stupid could he be? His breathing comes heavy, hard and fast in the late night’s cool air as he scrambles for a solution. _Get rid of it,_ he thinks fearfully, _there’s still time._ It’s a madman’s thought. But no, wait. He remembers the Stormtroopers that got into a shipment of Corellian wine and tried to hide their drunkenness by making themselves throw up. They used their fingers; he remembers the wine staining their gloves. All at once the panic breaks into urgency. He has a solution, he just needs to act upon it, quickly, right now, so he tries.

Ben had no idea it was so hard. He scrapes the top of his mouth with his nails and tastes blood, his body fights him to keep the food in, and he stabs at his throat from the inside, gagging as if bound, until he wins, until his body gives out to his willpower all over again. Once he’s started it’s easier. By the time he registers footsteps and two voices, he’s covered in a cold sweat, shaking, staring at the mess he’s made. That’s all of it, it has to be – he can see the burnt black piece he started with, so he’s alright. He’s in the clear. The Light won’t leave him, he won’t be Kylo Ren again, he’s fine.

Judging by the choked sound Rey makes, she disagrees. “What happened?” she breathes, to which he has no answer, because he’s not sure how to explain he just got into a fight with his own body without sounding crazy. Did she sense his distress through the Force? How powerful is she, not even a full week into her Force abilities?

Poe kneels beside him. That’s too stunning to process. Poe hadn’t recognized his childhood friend as Kylo Ren – the body shape was wrong, the voice modulated. Now Poe sees him and he surely has to know he’s looking at the man who tortured him. A First Order soldier would strike Ben down. Poe is a better man than that, however, and hands Ben a towel from somewhere to clean his face up, turning to his BB unit to make some request for a cleaning droid. Poe’s hand is hot as Jakku’s sun on his shoulder.

“Just keep it together. Can you stand? We gotta get you back to bed.” And it’s all wrong, people are supposed to hate their torturers, but Poe gets an arm under his shoulders, Rey is darting off to tell the General – Leia? His mother is here? Ben wants to tell Rey not to say anything; she’s already vanished down a corridor so he chokes on a sob. The pilot murmurs encouragements to him, keeps moving forward.

The journey back to his bed is the longest one he has ever made. People stop in the corridors to stare. Ben reaches out to their minds, afraid. They don’t know he’s Kylo Ren. Their chatter is different. So thin, they whisper to each other. I heard he was a First Order captive. Is that what they do to them? Someone who thinks themselves medically savvy murmurs that a person’s stomach will shrink if they’re starved long enough, that’s why he couldn’t keep it down; another asks if that’s blood on his chin. It might be. It might be the sauce. He is leaden, yet pride demands he not like Poe Dameron carry him under any circumstances. One of Poe’s friends, a gorgeous young woman with black hair and perfect bow lips (Ben wonders if anything about him is attractive right now and would place money on the answer being no) stops them in the hall. She radiates warmth in the Force. He wants to touch her just once to draw upon it.

“Can I help?” she asks, looking at Poe, then at Ben.

Poe nods. “Yeah, Jessika, I – we’re gonna need a change of clothes, about a head’s worth taller than what I wear.” Those will be too big in width, but there’s nothing to be done about it. “Tell whoever’s on duty you have my clearance to get into the Q-section, okay?”

She snaps into action. Ben's mind races. Q-section. Quarantine. Not meant for anything other than those who posed a danger to others or themselves if they left. Ben knows his mother has three bases with such sections. So she trusts him enough to bring him home, into her organization itself, to recoup. If he wasn’t about ready to collapse he’s pretty sure he would sob or try to find her. He doesn’t have the strength. They make it to the room without further incident, which is when Ben realizes he’s stained his father’s jacket with his sickness. The clothes come off one layer at time, the coordination to use a zipper or button difficult with his hands shaking from exertion. Poe helps. Ben wishes Poe would slap him instead of being so impossibly kind. He doesn’t know how people like Poe exist in this era, with war and rumors of war always circling, with death at his heels at all times, yet here he is, pulling off layers until Ben is painfully near-naked. The clothes arrive in record time. Poe stalls the General while Ben gets changed, pulling layers on that are not thick enough to chase the chill from his body, wrapping a blanket around himself to stop the full-body shivers.

Leia pushes her way in, sees him, and stops in her tracks. He feels her presence in the Force and the pain, the sorrow, the horror. Then all at once she rushes to him, pulling him close. His eyes shut as he leans against her, lets her sense whatever she may through the Force. So long as she’s here, that’s all he needs for the moment.

“I knew,” she murmurs to him, a tremor in his voice. “You weren’t wholly lost to us. I knew you’d come back.”

His brain sluggishly tries to process everything. “M’ sorry. This is far from the first impression I had wanted to make,” he notes dryly, getting a huff of laughter from her briefly.

“Oh, Ben. I don’t need you to be perfect.” She kisses his forehead. “I just need you to be here.”

 

* * *

 

 

There’s no telling who leaks it, but the base becomes aware the thin man in the otherwise vacant Q-section is the son of the General.

Poe tells her the news over a hot cup of caf. He’s asked around, trying to find the source. It isn’t Rey, who spends her time helping repair the damage to the Falcon and engaging in graceless lightsaber practice with Finn. Finn is still sort of wary of all the overly friendly people on base. He was a nobody in the First Order, he’s not used to people knowing who he is or wanting to talk, so he spends some time with Rey, some time in his quarters curled up with holonovels, exploring through words a universe he was never allowed to glimpse before. Jessika didn’t know until she asked Poe, who only told her since she’d kept secrets for him for years, even ones he hasn’t told his own father. He’s chased the rumors throughout the base without coming any closer to a source, and Leia wonders if he ever even thinks about not going the extra mile. She’s thankful for his help regardless.

Sipping her caf, which Poe is oddly talented at making, she asks, “And how do people feel about that?”

“They want him to be alright. There’s all sort of rumors that he was kidnapped or was an operative captured by the First Order. Either way, everyone is suddenly full of information about how the First Order treats the people that cross them.” He sighs, sitting down in the spare chair in her office. Poe is good at charming intelligence from people, which means he’s also good at seeing through bullshit stories when he hears them. “Everybody thinks you either were too merciful on the First Order given what happened or that they agree with what you did and they’d back you for doing something worse. Having somebody related to someone they know hurt makes it personal.”

She studies him, the hint of tiredness in his face, in his voice. “How do you feel about having him here?”

“That’s a great question. If I figure it out, I’ll let you know.” He shrugs, takes a long drink from his cup. “I keep having nightmares, but it’s not him. I mean, it is. But it’s not. Because Kylo Ren isn’t the guy I saw sprawled out on the kitchen floor. You know me – I’ve got all the Force Sensitivity of a rock. A good looking rock, more like a crystal,” he adds, solely to get a smile out of her (which works). “But even I felt something was really wrong back there that didn’t follow him here.”

Snoke’s influence, she thinks to herself. That would do it, would help push a starving man over the edge. As cruel a trick as it was to pull, a mind not thinking clearly was more likely to ally itself with him. His logic was sound. The Light defeated it anyway. She knows that, has sensed it dwelling within her son since his return, even when first glimpsed his unconscious body, pallor pale enough to rival the snow of Hoth. Now she needs to keep that influence away. Part of that will involve bringing Luke home, too, which won’t be easy when her brother blames himself for everything that’s ever gone wrong in his lifetime. Leia knows part of this is her fault, but she also has no qualms about blaming Snoke, the First Order, the people who should have caught on that something was wrong and didn’t. She’s seen enough to know things are never just one person’s fault. Life is too complicated for that to be the case.

The unknowns are haunting. Ben had picked through mechanical locks with the Force. She had heard from Luke that was theoretically possible, but never actually known for sure that was something people could do. Had her son had to become well versed in that, had he learned to work through the pain for food? What was Snoke doing that had led him to think even here, even with his parents, food was something he had to shovel down before it was taken away? He was worse than Rey when presented with a full meal and it scares her. People don’t become as thin as Ben is overnight. She knows it takes months. The fear turns to anger quickly, anger that will make Snoke wish he were dead should she ever meet him in person. Leia is not given to long lasting hate often. To truly make her want to kill someone, however, hurting her family is a surefire method. She doesn’t know what Snoke did in detail and she can see Ben’s trying not to think about it. He needs time before he’ll open up. In the meantime, she will protect him, help him get back on his feet, and wait for the day she can make Snoke suffer as much as Ben has multiplied tenfold.

Something tells her that getting Ben back to normal isn’t going to be as easy as giving him decent sized meals and time. She can only explain the apprehension as the Force, as a strange sense of foreboding that tells her there are things she isn’t seeing. For now, she has damage control to do, rumors to curtail, but she’ll keep an eye on Ben.

She wonders if, had she done that to begin with, all this could have been avoided.

 

* * *

 

 

They have the map. Luke is coming. Ben is not strong enough in the Light to face him, so he meditates from his bed.

He has more luck with small bits of food, even if never finishes even half his meal. Something in him knows he can’t gorge himself with the risk of losing the Force so real. Some other part of him demands he eat, if only to ease the worry off of his father’s face and his mother’s mind. Thus far everyone thinks he’s merely trying to recover. They don’t push him to finish things, even if the IV more or less tethers him to the room. Unable to lay flat on his back without his vertebrae digging into the bed, he turns on his side and repeats mantras, some of them so old their meaning was lost before they were passed on to his uncle. They are words that help him remember why the Light is worth returning to, words that remind him of his Uncle Luke, his mother, his father, days spent as a little boy trying to use the Force to catch a pet snake with Poe, innocent times where the galaxy seemed a grand adventure. He learns later those are the days before Snoke’s Force influence grew strong enough to start to change him.

Ben drifts in and out of sleep during his meditation attempts. He hasn’t done that since he was a padawan, still new to the concept. Here and now there isn’t anyone to criticize his lack of perfection at all things concerning the Force like there was then. Here there is slow, steady progress he will have to deal with until he gets better enough to try for more, and he finds the Light in the most unlikely of places. Finn is stronger in the Force than he has any inkling of. His thoughts also carry. Of everyone Ben has hurt – which is a very long list – if there was ever someone entitled to hate him, it would be Finn, whose life is in ruins solely thanks to the First Order. The day Finn lingers by the doors to the quarantine chamber, though, he is simply worried. He is not scared of Kylo Ren, he is scared for Ben Solo. In that moment Ben understands why Rey and Poe are so enamored with him, why they vie for his time. Where there should be hatred, there is only compassion, the depths of which are breathtaking.

People too new to this to even be called padawans are outdoing him in terms of Light Side connection and power. He owes it to them, to their forgiveness, love, kindness, their upstanding humanity in an inhuman time, to be better. Ben puts plans together in his head. He knows that he had to make individual amends to each person. He can help his father learn enough Outer Rim languages to rebuild his smuggling trade, although Uncle Chewie might not approve. He starts writing down everything he remembers that might be remotely useful tactically and has Poe deliver the messages to his mother to help in the fight against the First Order. What he’ll do for Poe, he doesn’t know yet. Rey and Finn present the same problem that needs to be solved: a desire for family. As much as Han has taken Rey under his wing (though he’ll deny it to his dying day) and Poe’s friends are now Finn’s friends, those are poor substitutes for actual blood relatives and answers. He knows he could pull answers from the First Order historical databanks about ship traffic around areas near Jakku, which would narrow it down. Not many ships in that area had humans onboard in any capacity. Finn’s skin color denotes he’s likely from one of the raids on the Okoros Moons, which is at this point quite deep in First Order space. The moons were mostly scientists, people who were too useful to kill. Plugging Finn’s designation number into the right database would tell them what moon to look at and then it would be a matter of finding whoever was missing a son his age. Surely the Force would guide them past that.

In order to do any of this, Ben will have to undo the entire First Order. He must be as strong in the Light now as Luke was when he helped topple the Empire. He must be made of Light itself, for the sake of these people who have inexplicably forgiven him, for the sake of all the other lives he has ruined. He will make Snoke release his stranglehold on the galaxy, bring Finn back to his parents, give Rey the answers she still seeks somewhere in the back of her mind, then he will take the registry of Force Sensitive children the First Order has and give it to his Uncle Luke, let him live his dreams of raising a new generation of Jedi. Everyone’s pains and aches will be soothed over, their losses replaced by gains, and he will be able to look them in the eyes again without the heavy dark weight of guilt weighing him down, threatening to drown him. All Ben has to do is reconnect to the Light Side. It will be a challenge. Fortunately he is the son of a smuggler and a General. He has never found a challenge he couldn’t successfully complete by bending the rules here and there.

He finds there is a trash chute in quarantine chambers, that there no are cameras on him, and that he still knows how to do pushups. He gets to work at night when they all think he’s sleeping. 

_Light, find the Light, be the Light._


	3. Chapter 3

_Be less, want less, hate less._

Ben has been cleared from quarantine enough to actually access the rest of the base, albeit only in limited timeframes. His mother can’t put a guard on him without inspiring more rumors, but the base is unaware he and Kylo Ren are one and the same, so the people he meets are more concerned for him than dangerous towards him. He avoids people whose curiosity flares up too brightly in Force, though everyone has a little bit of it when it comes to him. They know the General’s son went missing years ago. Poe is the only one who has any memories of him before his rescue. They know he is a bit too smart in technical terms and military jargon to have been some civilian kidnapped and locked away. No one really knows what to think, although Finn has been keeping distance from him. People tend to turn to Finn for answers to all their First Order related questions and Finn has no answers for them, not about this, about someone who wasn’t a Stormtrooper.

Part of the problem is that Rey and Han have left to get his Uncle Luke back. The base is alive with whispers and people have high hopes that are vague and unreachable. Luke is a Master, but he isn’t going to be able to fix all the damage that Kylo Ren inflicted upon the galaxy. One person can’t fight off the First Order, so Ben is going to have to make some miracles happen before his former Master comes back. First priority: train Finn in the Force. Rey bickered with Han until she got a spot on the Falcon, so she has his uncle’s lightsaber with her, but Ben knew how to improvise. They need something light that would give them feedback nonetheless to practice with, a location to practice in, and someone to watch and observe their flaws and strengths. He’s not sure how to approach Finn with the idea. He just knows he needs to help him. He ruined Finn’s life the worst by being part of the organization that took him from his family – he has to do something.

Anger and hate are the way to the Dark Side alongside selfishness. In order to immerse himself in the Light, he has to avoid focusing on his hatred for all the things he’s done. He has to make up for those things in order to bring some kind of balance to himself. Ben has far too much time to think about these things. He is only held up by Poe trying to integrate him into life on the base. In his head, Ben screams at him that he is wasting time, he has to get back to work, he isn’t the kind of good person who deserves friends and introductions to everyone Poe has ever worked with. In his head, Ben berates him for holding up progress the one time when it’s needed most. Then Poe smiles at him and he remembers that his old friend was the one to pick him up off the floor and he caves.

Light is selfless so he can’t do anything to hurt Poe, even just refusing to spend time with him. He has never been a pushover before. It’s a hard art to master, learning to let other people call the shots, stepping back when Leia is busy even when he wants to cling to her, sitting down to hear another pilot’s incredible story of bravery (they all have a dozen, he’s learning) when he wants to go for a jog, but he has to do it. He is a Skywalker, a Solo, a Organa. He has the willpower to force himself into compliance. If anything, he should be grateful. Luke will want him to go through all kinds of Jedi rites to reinitiate himself into the role of padawan, right? Or at least, he has the right to ask Ben to do so and it would be tradition. Luke loves tradition. This is practice for when he has to make things up to him later. That is what Ben tells himself each time as he goes through what should be normal interactions, that it is worth it, that it will pay off. He does not know how to be normal for its’ own sake.

No one has spoken of Ben’s incident in the kitchen. Somehow they have all come to the conclusion it was too much for his stomach to eat so much; no one knows he did it do himself. He keeps bracing for someone to corner him, tell him they saw what he was doing. He waits for someone to notice the excess food in his trash. Ben never lacks for things to feel guilty for, but he can add being wasteful to the list. The only way this will be worth it is if he manages to forge Finn into a better padawan and can make himself into one at all. He worries he will never be free of the Dark Side. It occupies his nightmares regularly. He meditates, he calls out to the universe, to the Force, to the Light. _Please lend me your strength, for the sake of other people. Please give me a chance to set things right. I will be better. I will be less angry, less cold, less violent. I will ask for less, bother others less, speak less. I will hate them all less, my parents, my uncle, even the First Order. Be less, want less, hate less. I promise._

He slips away one evening to try to find places to train and runs into Jessika. She is beautiful. Lately, Ben has noticed with mounting horror that a lot of people are beautiful. Finn is beautiful, with intense eyes deeper than the lakes beneath the ice fields of Hoth, that denotes depths he has never fathomed in someone before. Poe is beautiful, with an easy smile and laugh that makes Ben forget his own problems entirely for a moment. Rey is beautiful, power and grace and genuine joy over small things. Jedi have to be celibate. This is exactly the wrong time to be noticing how attractive people are, and also the wrong time to run into Jessika, who always looks at him like she’s a moment away from taking his hand and telling him it’s all going to be okay. He knows if she did he is so pathetic, so lowly, so starved for affection he would be hers, permanently – he would be anyone’s, for the selfish reprieve from how much he hates himself. Ben is still part Kylo. He is still a terrible person. This is the worst time for him to be close to anyone on any level. He’ll only drag them down; his past is so heavy, he can feel it weigh him down as he straightens up in front of her awkwardly.

“Hey,” she says softly. “Where are you going?”

“The roof,” he says instinctively, even though he has been strictly forbidden from going outside alone. “It’s been a long time since I got to be outside, planetside.”

“How long?” she asks, tilting her head, brow furrowing slightly.

He can’t remember. Whenever he was on a planet he was in a facility somewhere, training, working, trying to live up to Snoke’s expectations. His silence goes on so long that her face falls. Her fingers wrap around his wrist and she tugs him behind her, showing him exactly how to get to the roof. He’s supposed to be laying low, staying where he’s safe, and then he breathes in fresh air and his guilt evaporates in an instant. The sky is orange, gold, coral pink clouds, dusty glimmers around their edges. He takes in the dying light with such laser focus he doesn’t realize Jessika has let go of him or that she’s watching him. All around him, the air is charged with life. Ben’s mind reaches out and the volume of insects, bats, birds and Force-only-knew what else fills him up. He is alive, he is part of the intricately woven web that is the galaxy. All around him are people with dreams, hopes, loves, fears, nameless emotions and myriad thoughts, each unique, every person precious. How could he have ever killed someone when to kill someone is to snuff out all that person could ever be? The Force rolls over his mind the way waves on a beach do, naturally, bound to recede but bound to return. Each person is flawed, virtuous, integral, part of the world, part of the galaxy. He feels the air so full of life, of the Force, of the future, fill up his lungs and settle in the hollow places inside him. For a while the pain of his aching back, the bruises still sluggishly healing from Starkiller Base, even the headaches he’s always gotten when he’s tired ease up. He is so in love with the warmth of the Light Side the only reason he doesn’t cry is because his body seems to have forgotten how.

Ben finds a place to sit down and watches until every last trace of the light is gone. The Light remains inside him. Jessika takes him back inside, where he skips dinner in favor of curling up in bed, mind quiet, and sleeps a full eighteen hours without a single nightmare.

When he wakes up he feels so infinitely better that he knows he’s on the right track. Be less, want less, hate less. A three step program to getting the Force to return.

What kind of fool would he be if he stopped now?

 

* * *

 

 

The paranoia and irritation of before are soothed over by the Force, but they don’t vanish entirely. They simply turn inwards.

Ben has so much he needs to do and so little time. Train Finn, debrief his mother, try to guess the meanings of First Order movements, meditate, practice his own Force skills, keep an ear out for some kind of clue as to what else might be going on. He avoids Doctor Kalonia like the plague because she will tell him to rest or see that he hasn’t eaten as much as she thinks he should. She does not understand what he has to do or why he has to do it, which is why he hasn’t tried explaining things to anyone yet, not even his mother. There’s no time right now. He’ll do it later, when they all have a moment to breathe. He thought fearing other people in the First Order was bad because they would sense weakness and attack. Here, it’s worse: they’ll sense weakness and try to help, only to hinder their own side.

He knows he was stronger than this with the Dark Side. His reflexes were faster, his blows stronger, his movements more fluid. Switching sides has done something strange to his perception of the world around him and as a consequence, he’s slowed down. Although his sparring matches with Finn are one sided wins, that’s only due to Finn’s total lack of experience, nothing more. A victory over someone not yet a padawan isn’t something to brag about. What’s more, he needs to be better so Finn can even become a proper padawan. This doesn’t take into account how difficult it is to explain proper Jedi philosophy lately. His focus is shaky, his memories blurred, and pouring over them in order to put together coherent explanations of Jedi doctrine takes so much time he asks his mother for a notebook and a pen to write it all down, spending his nights working every inconsistency in his now-ancient memories out. The problem is not the student in this scenario. Finn is bright and capable and extremely eager to learn. Ben is the thing holding this process up. That knowledge is like acid in his mouth.

Ben is eating more, for the sake of being able to keep a better pace physically with Finn, but he’s found a trick to eliminating meat from his diet. The incident in the kitchen has left people on edge regarding Ben and food, so he plays to it, acting as if meat is now not an option after having thrown up so much of it. No one questions that, not even Doctor Kalonia, so his meals are made differently. There are other species in the Resistance that are herbivores, one more plate isn’t an imposition of any kind. As much as he knows he can’t eat too much lest he lose his Force connection’s strength, he would be lying to say he doesn’t enjoy the ability to sit down to a meal that doesn’t have so much energy packed into it that he’ll worry about it for days. He allows himself dinner, for both the practical reason that it helps him sleep and the personal reason that usually, someone will pop by around then and it wouldn’t do to be seen not eating. His mother visits when she can. Poe stops by to talk to him, trying to find the Ben Solo he knew as a child somewhere within the broken Kylo Ren they brought back. Finn pops in once or twice because the loudness of eating at a table isn’t like the forced silence of the First Order and he needs the peace of a middle ground, where they can talk or they can be silent, away from the noise. Jessika pops in once with candy she made, which she apparently likes to trade around base for virtually anything she wants. Pilots have sweet teeth, she informs him, and Ben doesn’t, but he can appreciate that sugar is pure energy and that in a pinch it can be used as an energy booster.

Given that he’s forcing things down his throat, dealing with their weight, then dealing with working them off, it makes him want to scream that he’s making so little progress. The Light is in everything, yet he has hit a wall, a block between him and some wellspring of energy on the other side. If he could just devote more time to it, perhaps he could figure this out. He has no time left for it, though, not when he’s finally starting to impart what he remembers to Finn, not when Poe is starting to learn how not to tense up in his presence. There is so much potential in these days before Luke arrives for healing, for damage to be undone even if only in part. He pushes himself through all kinds of activities in a frenzy, dreading Luke’s arrival, the confrontation that will come, the negative emotions that will take him back towards Darkness just enough to make further progress a total impossibility. For the first time in years he understands how much people mean and he wants so, so badly to help, to make things better, that it eclipses all other concepts in his life.

The morning before Master Luke arrives he does his usual morning checks. They’re a habit he’s developed, something that’s part of his morning routine. He counts the ridges of his spine in the mirror, makes sure the indent where his stomach was is precisely three fingers deep, wraps his hands around the top of his thigh to make sure there’s space there and wraps a hand around his wrist to check that with his forefinger and thumb touching, there’s still space. Ben needs to know that he has kept to his fasting meditation, that he hasn’t grown complacent or gone backwards from making progress. He needs his armor, his strong bones that can withstand anything, defiant and angular on his lean frame. Every morning it’s a reassurance that he’s still on track, except that morning, the indent of his stomach is not quite as deep. That morning, he can’t wrap both hands fully around the top of his thigh.

Panic explodes within him like someone took a blaster to jet fuel in his brain.

He’s damning them all, he’s slipping, he’s being too self-indulgent in a time where they all need him to be selfless. Light is compassion, kindness, thinking of others first – he knows this and he still decided that full dinners were more important than the fate of these people, who have forgiven him unforgivable sins, these people, who will save the galaxy. He is a greedy, horrible, disgusting monster of a human being and undoubtedly the worst Force user currently alive. They’re all doing so much to keep him safe. This place is full of people who are willing to lay down their lives for a better future that might not even be possible. Is this how he’s repaid them? He can’t possibly continue on like this, not when their lives might very well depend on him. He needs to do better. These low standards have to stop. Life is sacred and he’ll do what he must to protect it. His eyes dart to the trash chute. Is there still time, a whole night after he’s eaten, to get rid of the food and be able to burn it off?

Ben doesn’t know, but he scrapes his knuckles raw and bloody making every last drop of his stomach come out, then he rehydrates and sneaks off before the sun has fully risen to put himself through the workout of his life before his usual morning training session with Finn. Finn, who, he reminds himself, deserves a better teacher. He doesn’t even want to think about what Rey would say at how little Ben has been able to help him these past two weeks. The word failure echoes in every footfall that hits the ground when he runs. The pre-dawn air is cold and sharp, knives in his arms and legs and exposed face. Left with no other option, he keeps going, though he does treat himself to a hot shower in the fresher when he gets back to his room. He’ll need another washing after his session with Finn, but the cold is inside him, he has to recoup so he can train Finn at all.

Miraculously, he manages to impart two new stances for lightsaber combat into Finn despite his own failings, and guides him through breathing meditation with considerable ease compared to when they started. His hands want to shake from the cold that’s trying to glaciate him from within, so he folds them in front of him on his lap. If they look pale, well, that’s only because Finn is dark-skinned, really. Ben knows his limits. He knows them because he catapulted past them on Starkiller Base. He knows better these days.

Finn’s eyes are so warm that they burn as much as his touch when he takes one of Ben’s bony, cold hands in his. “Hey, are you alright?”

I have to be, Ben thinks. His body disagrees, refusing to let him pull his hand away from the source of heat, which is absolutely divine in the frigid morning. “I may be a little tired,” he concedes, glad he isn’t dealing with Poe, who would see through this in an instant. “All of this has been a lot to adjust to, as I’m sure you know better than anyone else.”

“It’s not just that, though. Something else is wrong.”

A truer statement has never been made. Everything is wrong. Ben hasn’t come back to the Light as fully and powerfully as he should have, he still can’t get a lock on what the tactics of the current First Order movements mean, he has no idea how to talk to Poe about what happened on the Finalizer, the list is endless. A better question to ask isn’t what’s wrong, it’s what about this is actually going right? Even now, he’s wasting Finn’s time by not concentrating on his training.

He wants to lean on Finn for support. Then he remembers that he was complicit in the system that rendered Finn an orphan in all the ways that matter. He goes silent, staring at their hands. How can Finn even touch him without feeling repulsed? And if he did, who could ever blame him?

“You don’t eat,” Finn says, stopping Ben’s heart entirely. “You pretty much quit coming to the mess hall back on the ship, and then you got smaller, and you aren’t getting bigger now.” Ben yanks his hand back as if burned, looking at him like cornered prey. The former Stormtrooper’s voice is perfectly understanding and that makes it all so much worse because he doesn’t understand at all. “Why are you doing this to yourself?”

Ben shuts his eyes to pull himself together. It isn’t Finn’s fault that he doesn’t understand how necessary this is, that the Light is something Ben still has to strive for daily. Finn is strong with the Light by his very nature. “I need to,” he flatly states, as if that’s all there is to say on the matter. “Don’t focus on me. At the moment, you are my top priority.”

Finn presses his fingers to Ben’s forehead. “You’re sick, aren’t you? You acted all weird after that thing in the Tsussain system. Whatever you picked up there, it’s not going away, Ben. You gotta go to the Doc, okay? This is serious.”

“…I will,” he relents, sending silent thanks to the Force that Finn is so naïve. “Later today, when I’m done talking to my mother – it’s just a debriefing, I can handle sitting down despite being sick, I assure you.”

He manages to get them back on track to their training after that. What he doesn’t do is go to see Doctor Kalonia, or eat any of his dinner. He goes to sleep early, sure that all he needs is more sleep. All he needs is rest to sustain himself, and when Luke sees how much progress he’s made, he will give him a second chance, a chance to make things up to him. _Look,_ Ben will say to him, to his proud mother and father, through his actions. _Look at how far I have come. I can do anything you ask of me. I am less, I want less, I have banished hate from my heart. I am one with the Light. I am good for/at something at last. You will never have to send me away again as you did when I was a child. I learned my lessons; I am better now. I am good enough to be part of this Resistance. I am good enough to be a padawan again. I am good enough to be part of this family._

_And if I’m not, I will keep going until I am._


	4. Chapter 4

Like all secrets, Ben’s eventually tumbles out of the shadows and into the merciless light of day.

He will admit even to himself that he preens before Master Luke’s arrival. He brushes his hair until the waves fall softly around his face. If his hairbrush comes away with an abnormal amount of stray strands, he honestly doesn’t notice, carefully taking a honey and Itzli mint oil and working it through his hair from the roots down, scrubbing himself clean and putting on the nicest of his non-First Order clothing. The gray pants are baggy on him but still short thanks to his height, although the shirt, tunic and overcoat his mother obtained for him when she saw how he shivers fit fairly well. He hesitates before braiding part of his hair into a padawan’s tail, but at the front, where it will be obscenely obvious. Luke is smart enough to understand the gesture of surrender for what it is and Ben is fully devoted to his apology, to his redemption. Ben is oddly pleased to find his father’s old boots fit well upon his feet. Ben enjoys it when things can be found, even tiny ones, that make him his father’s son or his mother’s child. Something about such things are humanizing and reassuring despite the massive upheaval he’s putting himself through.

The base is abuzz with rumors of Luke’s return. They make Ben’s stomach churn like a turbulent sea in a way that has nothing to do with his eating habits, cause his throat to close up as if speaking is too much effort, keeps his gloved hands folding into fists. He doesn’t like how easily Finn was able to see something was awry and won’t be offering up further proof of such to him. Likeable as Finn is, he is even more new to the Force than Rey, unable to grasp all its’ nuances, all that must be done, and Ben doesn’t know that now is a good time to explain it to him. Finn might get the wrong idea from it and start skipping his own meals when he doesn’t need to. Unlike Ben, his foundation in the Force is strong and solid, thoroughly in the Light simply by nature, forged under the pressure of the First Order’s oppression like a coal turned into a diamond, something that could not be enhanced by meditations such as these. Better to keep both Rey and Finn away from things they might not be able to handle, too, given how much that they had forgiven him. Though neither has said to Ben ‘I forgive you’, they are forgiving by virtue of tolerating his presence, by their actions and continued tolerance of his presence. He owes them so much sometimes it seems he will never be able to make up for it.

But the beauty of the Light is that he can. He can make right what was wrong, apologize for what he cannot, push the beast that is his pride aside and finally see, at last, exactly how much every single action, person, thought and intent mattered. Ben sees the virtues in all of them. Rey’s virtue is her resilience, her ability to endure as a child the kind of solitude that would break fully grown soldiers. Finn’s virtue is compassion so great it extends beyond the borders of what the normal person would even think possible. Poe is bravery incarnate, made real through selflessness that comes from knowing that if he takes the most dangerous flights his friends will not have to risk their lives and die as his own mother did. Jessika is gentleness despite being a lady of war and ace pilot who can destroy as easily as she can nurture. Leia is forgiveness that does not overlook sins but seeks to embrace the person despite them, an endless well of complexities that he is eternally astounded by. Han is determination that has known failure a hundred times over and has not faded in the slightest. They are all so wonderful, so incredible. He has to reconnect fully to the Light in order to make things better in their lives. It is his only desire, his only passion, his deepest longing, a need to create for others a better tomorrow than the present day they are living in.

When Ben sees Finn side-eye his braided hair, he smiles at the dark skinned man. “Poe told you about padawan tradition?”

“Yeah.” He swallows, running a hand through his own short hair. Ben wants to reassure him that people on the Okoros Moons usually wore their hairs as short as Finn does, wants to tell him that surely any Master will understand his lack of options given the situation. But the conversation about where Finn could come from and what that could mean is too heavy to have the same day as Master Luke’s arrival.

Instead he says firmly, “Master Luke will be impressed with how far you’ve come with the katas and meditation. You’re extremely gifted, Finn.”

An exhale, not a sigh, just tension. Finn is still, after all this time, unused to people paying him special attention. “You really think so?”

“I know so. You have a rare level of focus. In another life, you could have been a Jedi Knight.” He makes sure to look Finn in the eyes to emphasize his earnestness and is rewarded with a slight smile and a stiff nod. “If the opportunity arises, I would be proud to offer my assistance in teaching you how to make a lightsaber.”

He means it, too. He would trust Finn with one, would trust him not to use it in anger or as a tool of wickedness as Ben had used his own lightsaber previously. Finn can be passionate, yet Ben has never felt real hatred from him. The fact of the matter is that Finn is just a normal person dragged, kicking and flailing, into a world of drama, power and war. That is why Finn is an ideal lightsaber wielder – he knows what it is to be helpless against others who have no culpability for their actions. When Ben was in the First Order, he had read through their archives on Jedi and Sith of the past, on all who held titles like Master and Darth. One thing that former Darth Yarikha said stuck out in his memory when he looked at Finn: entrust an ounce of power to the powerless and you will find yourself awestruck by the caliber of their bravery. Ben thinks sometimes about how the darkest skinned humans and the lightest skinned Miraluka looked almost interchangeable with each other, save for the blindness of Miraluka, thinks of how the Okoros Moons were home to interspecies marriages, and wonders if Finn is a distant descendent of Yarikha, if he has ever been able to see at night like it was day as a Miraluka might through the Force, if part of him is carved from that same remarkable marble. Ben doesn’t know what he would admire more, for Finn to be a result of his own morality or for him to represent the continued lineage of those who fought for what was right at all costs. Both options make sense.

Both options, some treacherous part of Ben’s mind reminds him, make Finn a better Jedi, a better person, than Ben himself has ever been.

They are silent as they make their way to where Leia told them to wait for Luke. Ben is alight with nerves and wonders if Rey will be there as well. He does not know how to apologize for having dug into her mind. He struck that blow first, and though Rey had gotten a handful of randomized feelings from him, it wasn’t the same. Ben had attacked her. Anything she did in response was self defense. He supposes he’ll have to start out by teaching her how to avoid ever letting that happen to her again. It is a poor place to begin, but it’s all he has. After that, he thinks she would enjoy sparring with Finn while Ben gave pointers. Otherwise she might spar with him and end up justifiably beating him senseless. As therapeutic as that might be, he doubts very much that Master Luke would approve of their methods of handling past trauma. He was always looking for nonviolence, for the answer to things that involved the least amount of stress in everyone’s lives. Ben feels a deep regret, a wellspring of depression he could drown in, well up within him. He was the monster that scared Luke off, the wolf whose teeth had torn through the rest of the past. All that work to rebuild the Jedi and Ben undid it and took everything away from him in a single night and day. The pain must be unbearable.

Ben can feel vertebrae for every padawan he killed; with every breath his skin draws taut. Hopefully it can help demonstrate his sincerity in the cause, his dedication to making up for the unthinkable, for doing the unspeakable. He isn’t always sure it will do, but he has nothing else to offer up as proof of his conviction. What else can he do? There’s more to be atoned for than can be managed in a single lifetime, yet he only has one. In order to fix things, he must be extraordinary. Be less, want less, hate less. Be Light, be light-as-the-Light. Sustain yourself upon the Force alone as a spirit would, as a Master would, transcend the physical. He knows what he has to be in order to make things right: perfect.

He could do that. He can be that. He only needs a chance.

 

* * *

 

 

Rey’s gaze on his back propelled Luke forward. He has no idea where she learned that trick, something that has nothing to do with the Force but everything to do with her wiry muscles and too-easy grip on her staff, but it forces him out of the ship as much as Han’s hand on his shoulder does. Han doesn’t say much to Luke about everything. After the sort of hellfire forged friendship they’ve had, all Han has to do is give his shoulder a squeeze to convey _if you have to go through this, just know you’re not alone_ in that uniquely Han Solo way.

Luke sees Poe jog up to meet them, noting the way Rey pleasantly lapses into conversation with both the pilot and the droid without taking a moment to adjust to the dual languages. Like many Force users, she understands languages almost inherently. Unlike most, she had a severe trial by fire on Jakku, having to learn to harness that as a child to survive. He hasn’t told her that it’s the Force – he doesn’t want her to think she hadn’t worked hard at it or diminish her accomplishments. That was his mistake with Ben, he knows. No accomplishment, no matter how extraordinary, was ever enough to merit anything but a comment on a flaw in his form. Snoke’s voice whispered to Ben that no one wanted or valued him while Luke’s voice has told him time and time again that he was far from perfect. Even though plenty of the blame is Ben’s, Luke knows now he made mistakes. Han and Leia were too distant and he let them stay that distant. He let Ben’s anxiety fester so long as he controlled it and punished him for failing the Jedi Code when he couldn’t, thus allowing it to morph into anger. He was a child who felt hated by his own family who had worked himself to the bone attempting to impress someone, anyone, for just an instant. Snoke was impressed when no one else was. Snoke was there when days without contact from his parents became months. Luke knows that everyone is in the process of blaming themselves – although Han won’t let it show – but he also knows that to scapegoat Ben is to turn his back on the Jedi value of compassion.

And oh, how much he wanted to end Ben’s life the night Ben killed his other padawans, how compassionless he had been in that moment. It was a cold night, save for the roaring fire the compound had gone up in blistering at them, snow and ash in their hair, and Ben’s mind was unreachable, hate-anger-vengeance, and Luke’s heart was shattered, pain-failure-loss. He had reached out through the Force and grasped ahold of Ben’s neck the way his own father had grabbed his mother, hard and furious.

_Do it I don’t want to live I was never alive I am nothing more than Vader I’m good at/for nothing do it I want you to do it you’ve always wanted to no one wants me alive not even my parents and I don’t either so do it do it **do it DO IT**_

Luke remembers dropping Ben’s startled form onto the ground, unable to summon the strength to kill him. He recalls the horror of realizing his nephew wanted to die, wanted life to be over at his young age because there was simply no hope he could see in any future. Snoke was screaming at Ben to kill his uncle while he had a chance as Ben gasped for air, every limb shaking with an influx of Force energy. Then Ben got to his feet and ran, retreated into the snowy night, all instincts, no plans, and they had both done the wrong and right thing. Luke left the civilized galaxy behind to avoid exactly this meeting, this moment facing the suicidal young man whose sole comfort had been the Dark Side. His only reason to live had been removed, now; perhaps Ben had come back to his senses or perhaps he had found himself as unwanted on the Dark Side as the Light. If he could, he would go back in time and praise Ben’s every bit of work, his flawless forms, his well-practiced katas, his affinity for physical meditations. He would make Leia and Han be more involved.

He can do none of these things. So instead he endures Leia’s too-tight hug and quip about his beard, seeing the pain she’ll never show behind her eyes, her strength undiminished even after all that has happened, and then he lets her lead him to his nephew and Finn. Through the Force, he can sense them both long before he sees them. Finn is radiant in the Light, but hasn’t even begun to tap into his own strength yet, not really. Given his life circumstances, it was probably for the best that he had managed to slip under the radar of the First Order and the Force abilities within him had stayed dormant for so long. He is nervous, though compared to the maelstrom of anxiety that is Ben, Finn is tranquil. Ben’s emotions flicker between dread, anticipation, regret and hope. Luke can’t get a good grip on what’s going on under the surface. He’s not sure Ben himself can.

The breath catches in his throat when he sees his nephew.

“Ben… what have you done?” he doesn’t wait for an answer, even though Ben’s mouth opens to give it, turning to Leia to ask, “Why are you letting him do this?”

Leia’s eyes narrow at Ben, suspicion dawning. “Do what?”

Ben’s on his feet now, looking defensive and taken aback, as if Luke’s reaction is all wrong. “Uncle, I needed to be strong in the Light. Baridi Sangura-”

“Is not a role model for anyone seeking to return to the Light and live,” Luke says over him, over his own mounting horror, guilt settling like a mantle onto his shoulders as he sees the prominence of Ben’s shoulder blades, the hint of _bone_ at the base of his neck under his hair, the weeks turned months of lost meals that must have gone into this mad scramble for a glimpse of the Light. “You need to eat.”

“I need the Light,” he snaps back, defiance flaring to life in his eyes. Then Leia understands; her hand goes to her mouth, and both men reach for her. “Mother… please, let me explain…”

She takes a step back, holding up a hand. “Now, both of you back up. Who or what is Baridi Sangura?”

They share a look. And then Ben explains, and she wishes she hadn’t asked.

 

* * *

 

 

_In the era of the Sith’s near-dominance, the time between Darth Revan’s leading scores of Jedi to the Dark Side and the era that will ensue after his disappearance, there is a girl born on Korriban, in the very halls of the Sith Academy, to a recruit whose name is lost to history. No child has ever been born in the midst of such incredible Dark energy, and it seeps into her, binds itself into her body and mind before she has exhaled her first breath. Her mother gives her up to the Sith cause for a promotion. She is raised an experiment to see if heavy exposure to a place steeped in such energy will kill a human being so young and fragile. No one loves her, no one cares for her, and in turn she loves none of them and no higher cause than service of the self. In this, she is truly Sith._

_She is named Sangura by her teachers only because she needs a name to answer to, and she is raised to be the sort of Sith legends are written about, the kind of monster people as far away as the Outer Rim will tell their children of as a warning not to venture out at night. History books will call her Darth Sangura, but she never holds such a title, though she had the potential to. As a child she goes out at night and exerts her Force grip on the minds of captured Republic soldiers. When she is eight, the guards find her using the Force to make a man into her puppet, making him dance with her as if in a ballroom. Sweat beads on his head with the effort of resisting, but she shows no signs of straining to make him her toy, laughing innocently. She is a powerful wielder of Force Lightning as she grows older, a nimble and agile killer, an excellent trap for many Jedi spies entering the Academy who think they can save her from the Darkness and make her a weapon of the Light. They appeal to her humanity, which is nonexistent, and pay with their lives. She kills them all only after extracting every piece of usable information there is from their unwilling minds, their screams her lullaby, her luminous yellow-green eyes the last sight of dozens of foolish Light Side younglings. Sangura finds in the mind of one a location of, potentially, an unparalleled number of kyber crystals, perfect for use in lightsabers. To secure it may turn the tide of war._

_By this time Revan has returned from the dead and rejoined the Light. Republic forces are closing in on the Starforge. Another grand chapter in the struggle between Sith and Republic is coming to a close, but they are preparing for the next. They send her away on a small ship to seek out the crystals without a word to anyone. She gets more details from those who try to hide their thoughts when she mentions kyber crystals, killing many useless leads in the process of finding those who genuinely have useful information. Nearly three weeks into her journey, she finds the planet Mtsari, an icy desert where the sands are grey-black, the only water is ice and the only wildlife long dead. There are not enough resources for anyone to ever make use of this world, so what lay hidden here has been hidden for centuries, only stumbled onto by accident every few hundred years._

_She has no shovel. She digs with the Force, with lightning, with gloved hands, with gnashed teeth and unparalleled effort, looking for the caverns she can sense. The place is protected by the Light, but she has never failed in anything, thus she is unrelenting until she creates a way in where people like her should never tread. The earth does not so much part as it shatters for the young woman carrying the surname Sithborn, and she ventures for hours under the surface before coming upon the crystals. Eagerly, she reaches for one, intending to gauge which is the best and forge the best lightsaber for herself._

_Something invisible hits her in the dead center of the chest and flings her across the cavern, her body stopping only when it hits the opposite wall. She spits out blood, rises, and finds herself staring into the eyes of a Force Ghost, a visage familiar yet foreign, like a memory from a dream._

_“No,” the man says, as her breath hangs in the frigid air and passes through him. His Jedi robes are motionless, out of sync with the rest of his body, as if he exists in a void. “The Darkness will find no place to take root here. You journey is at an end, child.”_

_Rapidly, the air grows colder. The glass in her hairpins crackle and shatter from cold; ice forms on her boots, in the creases of the stiff fabric of her clothes. She is shaking so hard she cannot continue to stand. Frost from the ground seeps into her very bones, rising up, leaving her staring helpless at the pale blue ghost before her. Sangura calls upon the Force to give her heat, to give her strength, to push the blood through her veins and air through her lungs, but it is no use. The Dark Side is death, it is the end of eras, the self before all others, and it will not extend itself through her when she cannot further its’ goals. The world drains of color, all greys with the sole exception the light blue of the Master watching her life fade away, flickering like a candle fighting against the wind. All sound fades but her heartbeat in her own ears, a sluggish two beats every seven seconds right next to each other._

_Dum-dum… dum-dum… dum-dum…_

_Dum-dum… dum… dum…_

_…dum…_

_…_

_Then there is a glow so bright the blue Ghost flees, and a gentle, warm hand upon her frozen cheek, fingertips tracing the line of her jaw. “Oh, my daughter. My child. What a fool I have been; hush now, and fear no more my old Master.”_

_Her limp, near-lifeless body is picked up and cradled to an orange vision, a see-through woman whose heat seeps into every inch of the girl she long ago gave up. Sangura does not know her by sight. She has never known her mother, never needed to know such a thing, so she does not understand at first that her mother was once a Jedi before becoming a Sith. What she does know is that for the first time in her nineteen years of life, someone is holding her, is soothing her as she ails, is running a hand through her thick ink-brown hair with love. Her heartbeat is still slow, her eyes unfocused. She watches as her mother plucks a crystal from the wall, a small yellow-orange thing, like the light of early dawn._

_“The Dark is vast and deep as an ocean, and you are drowning,” Sangura is told, “But they have lied to you. You are not strong with the Dark Side, you are strong with the Force. Your body is what has been corrupted by the Darkness, your body and your mind. You must bend their will to yours. You must break yourself down as you broke through the ground to get into this place. Train yourself to hate that which has infected you. Create a yearning for the Light that the starving have for food. Reforge yourself, or you shall not last the year.”_

_Sangura awakes on the surface of Mtsari with her hair elaborately done up and a kyber crystal in her hands._

_For many months there is no telling what has become of her. Her shuttle is found traded for raw materials in the Outer Rim fourth hand, no Sith has claimed the glory of having bested her, and no one has the time to care after a while. A single person is not as important as rebuilding the Empire or Republic to undo the damage of what has happened. It is not uncommon for Sith younglings to turn to the Light in mimicry of Revan’s return to it, mistakenly seeking power. One such Sith, a girl with her own custom-made lightsaber, shows up on the steps of an old, orthodox Jedi monastery in the rain one night, rail-thin with determination in her eyes. She is too old to be trained by anyone else, but she also will not leave, running laps around the building during the day, doing chores, making food, forcing herself to be useful to them until one of them teaches her basic katas. Her progress is rapid even though she is given only tiny scraps to work with. She watches the older Jedi practice breathing meditation and teaches it to herself. She does not sleep, she takes her energy from the sun and moon, she does not eat, she sustains herself on water and practices for hours on end. The day comes her devotion is resented by the other padawans, the legitimate ones, so they challenge her to lightsaber sparring. Her limbs are like rods, her lightsaber oddly colored, clearly poorly made. But she draws upon the Light, and it shoves her into motion, her lack of weight keeping her from being tethered to the earth. She is movement, she is wind, she is untouchable, her lightsaber is like a feather wielded by a maelstrom, and she wins against ten long-trained disciples of the Light on her first try. Her mouth is a fountain of Jedi mantras, her mind is a blank book any Master may write in, her body is repulsed by the Light her soul seeks._

_She introduces herself as Baridi when she is made a proper padawan at the age of twenty, and her Force Healing is all that keeps her alive as she continues on her training. The Sith eventually become aware of some young Jedi they need to strike down who is so strong in the Light that she can resurrect the dead on the battlefield, as if the Light is carved into the curves of her very bones._

_It is only when she leads a surprise raid on Korriban that her old Master, the one her mother gave her to, puts the pieces together._

_“Sithborn,” he accuses as he tries to strike at her, only to cut at robes that hide limbs like twigs._

_“Baridi,” she corrects as she whirls and stabs him through the chest, burying her yellow-orange lightsaber into his heart. Her eyes are luminous as the sun’s rays through spring leaves. “Baridi Sangura.”_

_Her crusades past that are glorious, burning through the Empire when they can least afford it, her battalion supplying themselves with unique lightsabers whose colors are never matched again on either side. She takes the secret of where she gets the crystals with her, for none of her men know the way to the planet she describes, and with time it becomes part of the legend and lore of Jedi, a place thought of as a dream or another realm. Attempts to find it by the Sith fail although it logically should be somewhere in their space. Baridi never writes down the coordinates to the planet Mtsari; before she ventures there, time after time, her padawans over the years observe her dancing as if in a ballroom, with a flickering mirage of orange she calls ‘Mother’, and each time, she somehow finds her way. She rarely eats in the presence of others, if she does at all, subsisting, it seems, upon only the Force, yet her Force Healing only grows in power the more she pushes herself, until most who have served with her have been resurrected at least twice by the time their beloved General draws her last breath._

_When she dies at the age of twenty-four, it is not at the hands of the Sith._

_The Light simply cannot sustain anyone indefinitely._

_Not even its' champion._


	5. Chapter 5

Ben is just trying to save himself. It’s enough to make Leia cry. 

Luke has the good sense not to immediately comfort her when she goes to her room to retreat and regroup, given she’d turn on him in an instant with words sharp as a blade, but no one has ever accused Han of having an excessive amount of sense. He goes in, dodges a thrown pillow from the bed and knows by the fury in her eyes she’s blaming herself entirely for this. Half of this marriage has been arguments, including, it seems, this. Somehow it seems sort of fitting that they’re as lost now as they were when Ben was a child – in a way, they’re picking up where they left off. That doesn’t mean it’s any easier, though.

If Han was going to be truthful, he only partially blamed Snoke. Part of him blamed Luke. If all that Jedi gunk, the mythology, the stories, the practices, hadn’t been etched into Ben’s mind like carvings into stone, they could have avoided this. Not all of this, maybe, not Ben falling to the Dark Side, but _this_ , the thinness of Ben’s body, the jagged lines of bone that stabbed right at his parents’ hearts, the fact Ben’s eyes, dark as Leia’s and just as intelligent, held absolutely no regret, were home to some kind of passion, devotion, to what he’s doing. Why should he feel sorry? He’s doing his best to be strong in the Light Side, and isn’t that what Luke always told him he needed to do more of? Han wants to yell at his brother-in law until things make sense again.

Then it occurs to Han that a better father would have more say over his son than his son’s Master, and the words die in his throat. A better father wouldn’t have pushed Ben away so much that Ben would fall to the Dark Side in the first place. He sits down beside a huffing, distraught Leia on a bed that once was theirs but these days is mostly hers, when someone reminds her to sleep and use it, anyway. Most days she falls asleep in the common room working. Leia is nonstop; maybe Ben got that from her, even if got his reckless tendencies from his father. Han takes in just how tired she looks. It’s been a long time since anyone dealt Leia a blow like that; it’s been decades since Han looked at her after doing something stupid and on that line between reckless and brave and wanted praise. That’s going to keep him awake at night, he can tell already. Ben has Han’s foolhardiness, his willingness to improvise and take the riskiest path so long as it was the most profitable one. If Han had Force powers and somebody told him there was a trick to kicking it into high gear, especially at that age? He’d have done it, hid it and been unrepentant when he was caught. Ben might get the Force from Leia, but he’s gotten Han’s less attractive personality traits.

“Quit doing that,” she says into the silence, explaining when he looks at her, “Quit blaming yourself. You’re not the one who suggested sending him off to Luke’s.”

“Neither were you,” he shoots back. His wife glares at him for a second, an exasperated look informing him that wasn’t the point. “If I don’t get to blame myself, neither do you, Princess.”

The nickname makes her smile sadly for a second, just a brief moment. He wishes someone could help him understand how they drifted so far apart. All he wants right now is to go back to whatever moment he screwed up that set them on this course and take some other course of action. Maybe Ben wouldn’t be doing this if they hadn’t sent him to Luke’s, maybe he’d be better if his parents had talked to him more, if they had been closer, he doesn’t know. Han has no idea what having Force powers is like nor does he want to know, quite frankly. The cost doesn’t seem worth what it does to a person. He’s been there beside Leia through enough nightmares of people’s deaths felt through the Force to see how it can be best described as a magnificently over-glorified burden. Useful, sure, but he wouldn’t want to have it crawling under his skin and into his head all the time. He idly wonders if Ben has Force nightmares, if Ben has random bursts of energy from the Force like Leia does that let them power on working into the night long after everyone else was exhausted, if Ben ever throws things with his mind like Leia did when she was pregnant.

How much he doesn’t know about his son is a damning thought in and of itself.

“We’re gonna have to talk to Doctor Kalonia,” he says just to keep the silence from suffocating them, much as he doesn’t want to even think about how hard it’ll be to endure the doctor’s look of judgment. “I may be able to fix ships, but I don’t know a lot about biology. Never needed to. Chewie might have some suggestions. Force knows that Wookie cuisine is heavy enough to put some weight back on anyone.”

She exhales, not a sigh, just a controlled breath. “Ben used to love Chewie’s food. The second you said he hadn’t eaten on the way back, I should have known-”

“He was conscious maybe twice, if you can call it that. Leia, I don’t think he even remembers the trip back. Nobody could’ve told a thing from that. I’m the one who hauled him back and didn’t realize just how thin he was-”

“The boy dresses like a pile of draperies, no one could have told that.” Leia pinches the bridge of her nose, clearly irritated. “You really do know how to make this all about you, don’t you?”

“If it keeps you from doing the same?” he retorts, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, “I can do this all day.”

She buries her face in his shoulder. “I love you.”

“I know.”

 

* * *

 

 

Ben has an argument for Luke prepared in his head within a few minutes, but all of that goes out the window when his uncle says softly, “I’m sorry, Ben.”

“No you’re not,” he says, and he doesn’t even know why he said it, just that it’s what he feels to be true. It’s the first and last thought he has regarding the matter. Actually, he’s glad Finn cleared the room so that the more sensitive padawan isn’t here to hear the bitter chuckles that tear their way out of Ben’s throat. “I doubt you could have done anything more to push me down the right path if you had tried. There is nothing to be sorry for; some people are just destined to fall. Isn’t that what Bastila Shan taught – what you believe?”

Now Luke looks almost on the verge of the tears, hollow-eyed and old. Age does not suit him, or maybe it suits him perfectly. He wears the wisdom and the look of a man who holds the secrets of the galaxy in his mind well. What does not suit him is the pain, betrayal and uncertainty in his face. Ben wonders in this moment as he has always wondered: does his uncle regret not killing him? He hasn’t given the man many reasons to forgive him. He was a terrible nephew, a worse padawan and not much in the way of anything else. Ben doesn’t hold illusions that he’s some wonderful perfect radiant source of Light and love and positivity that must be loved and cherished, coddled and respected. He was many things in the past. None of those things are on the list. Likely, they never will be, if he doesn’t eradicate all the awful tendencies bubbling up inside him. He has to be gentler, more understanding, be less, want less, hate less, until he has lessened so much of his negative qualities he has at least one positive trait. He has so much yet to do that maybe, honestly, they’d all be better off if Luke had killed him, Jedi Code be damned.

“I have done this to you, haven’t I?” Luke says softly, and suddenly Ben is incredulous, angry, actually physically on edge because he wants his due credit. Ben is the one who does vigorous workouts on the unforgiving stone floor every morning, he’s the one who bites the top of his hand to keep from snatching up food, he’s the one who pounds down tea like it’s water and there’s a fire he’s trying to quench.

Luke does _not_ get to take credit for Ben’s work.

“Actually, I managed this myself,” he replies, shoving down anger. Anger is not Jedi-like, not part of the Light. Be less, want less, hate less, and what was anger if not the start of hatred? He’s still such a mess, damn it all. Clearly, he hasn’t been trying hard enough. But he can do better, he can find something else to cut out of his diet, he can work harder, workout longer, he just needs to sit down and analyze things. “I am doing the best I can.” 

All this does is make Luke hold up a hand for Ben to be quiet. “I was hard on you, harder than I should have been. You were, you are, family. In my striving to treat you like other padawans-”

Anger flares up, white-hot claws tearing its’ way out of his heart and his mouth, before he can stop it. “You _never_ treated me like the other padawans.” Just as quickly, like a flickering candle changing directions in the wind, that anger turns inward. “I was evil and you could see it, you could see what was wrong and what was coming. You were only trying to save me. I’m – I am sorry, Master. Uncle. I have no right to be angry with you for my own failures.”

That was why his uncle had made him meditate longer, do more laps around the Temple, given him more tasks to do, right? Everything was a result of Ben’s lack of skill, his inability to chase away the hatred in his heart, both that which made him hate other padawans and that which made him fantasize about dying and reincarnating into something simple and unremarkable like a tree frog. Sometimes Ben still had flashes of elaborate scenarios he had conjured up for himself. He had gotten so many punishments for such minor infractions that he was more at home in solitude than with people from an early age. He had built up places and stories in his mind, dreams of leaving the Jedi Order and going to Hoth, living in isolation as a tauntaun farmer; thoughts of running away to Pacifica IV and running one of the remote water purification rigs funneling in clean water to the planet proper; visions of a life carved out in the Sansar mountains, untraceable, unreachable through the planet’s vast ion storms. When he was a child and teenager he had let his mind leave his body to dwell in dreams that centered around the common theme of being left alone, completely alone, alone with no one to tell him about all the progress he was failing to make, the friends he was alienating, the parents he was letting down, the Jedi Code he wasn’t living up to. Of course, that much daydreaming led to more falling short. Nothing Ben did was ever good enough because he had been so self-sabotaging. 

These nights he dreamed of being brutally killed on the battlefield, of being tortured by a righteous (and right) Hux who had seen it all coming, of being shot by Phasma (who never really cared because no one ever did), of his funeral, of his mother being so proud, his father telling his smuggler friends about his son the war hero, of Poe finally forgiving him and leaving a white Fau lily from his late mother’s garden on the grave, of Rey and Finn never having another nightmare where he was the predator. It all ran together in one big long parade of affirmations he had, at long last, after a lifetime of failures, succeeded. It would be the moment where he stopped being The Second Coming Of Vader and became The Son Of The General. In that moment people would stop saying how much he didn’t look like his parents, how actually, he had his mother’s ears, his father’s expressions, how his hair curled like his uncle’s had when he was younger. The galaxy would forgive him for all the things he had done wrong, all the things he had not done at all, and all the awful things that could have been had he not returned to the Light- 

Only when Luke made a choked noise does Ben realize what he was doing. “Get out of my head!” he half-shouts, consciously shoving his former Master out as he did so. Great, he was out of practice shutting out Force users, he had to practice that now, too. He mentally added it to the growing list of things he had to work on. “You never wanted to be in there before!”

This time, his uncle recoils as if struck. Ben’s eyes widen.

“That’s not – I didn’t mean that – I am sorry, I can – I have to work on this, on getting rid of my anger, I know, _I know_ , there is no passion, there is only the Force. I’m working on it, I promise I am. Just give me time, Master, please.”

“Ben, just… stop. Before you kill yourself, stop all this. I – I have to go talk, to your mother, and father.”

The color drains from Ben’s face. He knows Luke will make them put insane restrictions on him. What he can’t understand is why. All he’s doing now is everything Luke ever wanted! He is a vessel for the Light, he seeks it the way a man on fire seeks water, he meditates and meditates and even when he isn’t he’s training Finn, Finn, who is pure Light and joy and wonder, who has to be leaving some Light in Ben just through proximity. He paces every waking moment. He does push ups, he does handstands where the Force is the only thing giving his body the strength not to crumple, he is losing not just weight but something far more important. He is losing the things he used to be. Ben has not thrown a single one of Kylo’s trademark tantrums since he was rescued. He has not choked anyone, has taken everything in stride, as best he can. Kylo Ren is a villainous character molded by Snoke into the exact opposite of who Ben Solo has doggedly fought to make himself into. It’s as if some incredible carnivore repeatedly came to him in the night and slowly ripped away at both his flesh and all the parts of him that are evil, until only purity and bones remained, until he was good enough.

If Luke stops this, Ben knows he won’t be good enough for all of them any longer. They’d all known it growing up, ever since he was a small child. There is so much Vader in him still. Like fat, it can be purged, expelled, but not if he has to eat.

It’s his fault, though. If he’d made more progress before his uncle arrived, Luke would understand.

In the end this is just one more way Ben has let him down.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters in one day is my way of apologizing for the schedule slip. Sorry!

* * *

He loves tea the way Baridi Sangura did thousands of years before he was born.

The warmth fills his stomach up, tricks it, and it’s all a series of tricks now. He has to trick everyone around him and trick his body into submission. Ben is a clever man, though, he can do it. The only one he isn’t going to be able to fool outright is Dr. Kalonia. Irrational as it is – she can’t be expected to understand Jedi practices – he sort of hates her. He’s got an end goal that is so much more important than her medical readouts that it takes everything he has in him not to scream when she insists on some other test for some other purpose, as if she doesn’t already know his body more intimately than anyone in existence. He misses being able to thrash medical droids and avoid medbays altogether, but he’s okay, this is okay, he can work around this somehow. He comes from a long lineage of intelligent people who improvised their way to victory. He can do likewise.

People give him tea whenever he asks. Ben is not lying when he says he’s cold and wants it to warm him up. Once, without realizing it, he drinks an entire pot of it by himself while reading some of Dr. Kalonia’s mandated medical texts on what he’s doing to himself. That incident seems to convince people he genuinely needs his food and drink to be warm. He agrees with the latter. The former is tempting, greatly so, a traitorous part of him whispering that just one warm bite would be _so good_ , he should try a bite, he could work off a bite, couldn’t he? Refusing is incredibly difficult to do now that he has to do it nicely, but he has to make sure he reconnects fully with the Light, so he can’t get angry and throw a fit. He has to find excuses, some kind of one-off lie, rotate through all of his phrases just right, keep track of who he told what so he doesn’t contradict himself. Their eyes are all on him now. Finn told Rey and Poe, Poe confided in Jessika, Han and Leia told Uncle Chewie and Dr. Kalonia, and now Ben carefully examines the emotions and looks in the eyes of everyone he comes across. How many people know? He’s not sure. He has to assume everyone does until proven otherwise, it’s the only way to get out of this mess, he can’t let himself get fooled by anyone’s seeming goodwill. They don’t understand.

Solving puzzles with the aid of the Force was a common part of padawan training. This is a lot more complicated. Ben still views it as a puzzle, a never-ending one, a morphing one, a new level of challenge above and beyond his old training. How many ways can he say he isn’t hungry and make it convincing? How many times can he feign tiredness and tell people he’ll eat after he sleeps? How many nights can he spend pacing and doing exercises when they get food into him? How many excuses he can find in dinnertime conversation to leave, to act as if something in the talk had upset him? He’s surprising himself with his own ingenuity. He sneaks food into his napkin, gives it to the black cat Poe has tamed into living on base with them, squishes it together to make it look smaller, talks through meals even though he hates talking to people who are out to get him the way it feels like all of these people are. His parents thought mandating he eat with someone would mean he had proper meals. He’s smarter than he used to be, though. He can work around this obstacle. He’s not defeated yet.

They’re at war with the First Order, so Jedi training goes on for Finn and Rey, and _they_ are stubbornness incarnate, so they eventually cave to the temptation of extra lessons from Ben. He makes sure not to over-exert himself in front of them. The Force helps, it gives him energy, makes him look like he’s doing much better physically than he actually is. Besides, so far they aren’t exactly ready to go into battle themselves; mostly they do self control exercises, balancing tricks, things designed to get their bodies in tune with the Force that don’t rely solely upon it, lest they end up with injuries that they’ll all have to explain to Luke later. Rey is better at raw Force potential than anyone Ben’s ever seen. All the power that surges through her is blinding in its’ own way. Finn is full of enthusiasm and the efforts he puts in to catch up to her are commendable. He is earnest, eager to please, eager to help, if a bit insecure in himself sometimes. His hair is actually growing in now, and Rey has taken to reaching out and tugging on a fluffy strand of it when he’s being too hard on himself. Ben wonders if they’re romantically inclined towards each other. Happy as they might make each other, he feels extremely uneasy at the idea of how strong with the Force their potential child would be. The Force ruined his childhood. It took him from Ben Solo to Second Coming Of Vader. He tries not to think about it.

There’s enough to think about just meditating is hard. Admittedly Ben’s better at that than Finn or Rey because while they have full lives to lead, he’s been benched by Dr. Kalonia until he puts on a frankly insane amount of weight. He has all the time he ever wanted and more to meditate. Rey is vocal about her frustration with not getting it down perfectly in her first few tries. Finn looks silently embarrassed. Ben reminds them they’re just starting and he’s had an absurd head start on them both. This does nothing to ease Rey’s dissatisfaction with everything; Finn just thinks very loudly that he should be doing better so he can help people. Finn loves the Resistance, loves everyone around him who treats him with even the smallest shred of kindness, and Ben has never felt protective before but he wants to shield Finn from any and all cruelty, keep him as far from the Dark Side as possible, wants to listen to him gush about something new and wondrous he’s just learned for hours. Thankfully Ben guards his thoughts very carefully so no one has to hear him stupidly mother-hen a grown man in his head. Or at least, he’s half-sure it’s a mothering instinct. Sometimes he catches himself staring at Finn’s perfect smile or caught up in Rey’s contagious smothered laughter and has to remind himself Jedi are completely, utterly celibate. He focuses on lines of Jedi doctrine when he’s meditating until his head echoes with the effort of it. Neither of these people have done anything so awful as to deserve him and he is not a good Jedi if he’s having these thoughts.

He wishes he could seek out Master Luke to help him clear his head but they avoid each other so completely it’s a thing of perverse beauty. Ben will drop whatever he was holding and leave if Luke enters the room and Luke will try to sense Ben’s mind and keep away from him to begin with, and when Leia tries to make them sit down and eat a family meal they barely glance at their food, staring at each other. Luke wants into Ben’s head. Ben wants into Luke’s to pull information on the Force from him. A Force user cannot guard their mind _and_ dig through someone else’s so they stare at each other until a verbal argument erupts. Ben leaves the room, deciding to be the bigger man for once, to not rise to any of those barbs disguised as concerned questions. Leia doesn’t try to get them together again afterwards, although she’s definitely still planning _something_. His mother does not give up or give ground without a hidden motive. There’s a reason she’s the General. Unfortunately, she doesn’t understand him anymore than Luke does these days.

Then there’s Han. Ben wants to throw it back in his face that Han avoided him for years, a few weeks of Ben avoiding him is absolutely nothing by comparison. Every time he so much as thinks it, he sees his father’s concern in his mind’s eye and relents. He tries not to keep the same hours as Han for the sake of not knowing what to say to him that wouldn’t be misunderstood or a disappointment or both. All the Force powers in the world will never render Han Solo someone who can be read. What goes on in his head is his own secret, which makes Ben nervous. It’s hypocritical to be anxious about what Han is thinking when Ben is lying to everyone that he’s doing his best to get better, when he’s apparently as difficult to read as his father. The simple fact is that Ben can’t deal with uncertainty. He needs a plan, an idea of what he’s doing, where he’s going, why, and what the plans and whys of other people are. Otherwise he’ll end up as locked out of the loop and out of everyone’s lives as he was as a child. Ben doesn’t want to be pushed away again. He needs the Force to be indispensable to the galaxy, so he fights the dizziness, the hot flashes, the shivers, the urge to sit down and eat until he can’t fit anything else into his body and lay down and sleep for years.

His father makes everything significantly more difficult the day he lets Ben help repair the Falcon. The ship is like an old friend forever in need of a few more credits; even Rey is annoyed and fond of it in equal parts, despite having confided in Ben she thought it was garbage at first. Ben hasn’t repaired the Falcon with his father since he was eight. He nearly cries when Han asks him and he doesn’t know _why_. It’s just a ship, this is just because Rey is busy, right? Something akin to fear rises up in him, a nagging feeling his father won’t let him do this again if he messes a single thing up. He works harder and more carefully than Han or Uncle Chewie put together, putting every last thing in order for three hours, dodging personal questions from his father entirely on accident via his laser-focus, although he also has questions about his father’s past exploits because _how_ does someone get tentacle residue in the ceiling’s coolant system? The physically impossibility of it is stunning. Ben’s impressed and horrified by the story his father gives him by way of explanation. Uncle Chewie gives up trying to get Han not to embellish the story ten minutes in and goes to take a break. Talking over Han is a losing venture.

Only when the smell hits him does Ben realize it was an excuse to go cook. He clamps a hand over his mouth when the Wookie comes back with what presumably is supposed to be dinner. The aroma is almost like peanut butter, yet spicier, not-quite-garlic, some kind of thick mix of a heavy sauce and vegetables into a dish not exactly a stew, given it could be eaten with a fork. That’s before the green Dooreesian kale bread registers with his system, fresh baked, looking soft and like it would be so easy to swallow, to bite into, to tear apart. He can see the sugared bantha butter off to the side on the tray and his mind just sort of stops working. The urge to bolt away and towards the same spot has every nerve in his body working overtime; he is overwhelmed by cold while heat flares up in his stomach, an ache so intense he has to brace his abdomen with his free hand. Ben is barely aware that his father is speaking to him. He’s unaware he’s shaking until Han puts a stabilizing hand on his shoulder. Ben steps back and retreats, remembering the good old days, when he was seven and they’d eat in here, the three of them, listening to Han embellish stories, back when people _wanted Ben around_. Back when he was someone other than Vader reincarnated, back when he was Han’s boy, back when everything made sense, when the future seemed so bright, so secure. None of that is true now. He’s not really Ben, deep down he’s still Kylo Ren, he doesn’t _deserve_ this, he hasn’t made enough progress.

Of course, if he had been a better child, they never would have had to send him away at all, would they? They would have been able to love him the way Poe’s dad loved him. Ben had seen Kes Dameron scoop Poe up into his arms as a child and throw him into the air, catching him deftly, swinging him around, so happy, so obviously deeply loving. He treasured the child he’d helped create. Maybe Han had too, but then Ben had ruined everything by getting angry at random intervals, by getting jealous of other kids, starting fights, yelling at people, using the Force to throw things – he was so awful, just terrible, an unlovable kid, aggressive without a cause, uncontrollable, a wild animal. Sometimes he had apologized but it never helped, it never took away the thing everyone felt. He felt through the Force that everyone was anxious, on edge, around him. Sometimes people were afraid of him, annoyed he was present, just plain _tired_ of him. No one wanted him.

No one wants him _now_.

That makes his decision for him and he turns to leave, so much emotion whirling around in his head that he can’t even put names to them. His father grabs ahold of his wrist, winces when he can wrap his fist around the bony joint with room to spare. “Ben-”

“I should go,” he says, cuts his father off just so he can do as little damage as possible, make this end as quickly as he can. He doesn't know how long this brief moment of his father caring will last, only that he can't witness it end and make it out alright. “I don’t want to ruin your life again.”

Han swallows, thickly. “…I said that when you were _five_ , I was a new parent, I was – look, kid, there’s no manual for learning how to be a good father. I didn’t mean it.”

Shame floods him and he snorts, although there’s a note of something half-hysterical, half-broken in it. “I deserved it. You aren’t a bad father, I’m just a monster.” The word slips out but it’s so accurate he can’t even bring himself to speak after it. Somebody had to say it. He’s always been a monster. They’re not going to be able to make progress until they deal with that.

Uncle Chewie sets the tray down and approaches. When Ben was very small and his parents were busy, Chewie was his babysitter, his godfather. Other humans were taken aback by it, by how a Wookie could beat out Luke for that position. They didn’t know Chewbacca very well. Few people knew how he had once had a wife and a son, Lumpy (short for Lumpiturar, old Wookie for ‘playful one) before the Empire had simply erased them from existence. Chewie had kept his surname off the records in an attempt to hide them, but two blaster holes through the head and a quick holovid of the crime later, his whole family was gone. He’d grieved almost entirely with Han. He would overload Luke and Leia with it accidentally through the Force otherwise. Then years later, after the war was over, Ben came into being, and Chewie had held him securely, let infant Ben bury his face in his Uncle’s fur. He had never complained once about helping toddler Ben walk, talk, learn Wookie, learn to write. He had introduced him to Wookie pottery and honor culture, enlisted his help in making Wookie dishes rich in spices and vegetables instead of meat, taught him how to daydream his way to sleep. Ben wonders if his Uncle Chewie sees any of the old Ben Solo, the little boy baking wukoria pastries alongside him in the evil thing he morphed into long before he was given the title of Kylo Ren. He knows Chewie used to think of him as something more than a nephew. He also knows no one could possibly look at him as he is now and feel the same way. Forgiveness just isn’t a possibility.

Except then Chewie pulls him into a warm hug that feels all-encompassing with how massive Wookies are and asks softly, “ _Is that why you won’t eat?_ ”

He forces back tears. There is no sorrow, only the Force. There is no conflict, there is only the Force. There is only peace only peace only peace _only there never was **because you don’t deserve it**_ and he bites his lip so hard he draws blood trying to keep it all in. He isn’t sure when he stopped deserving it. When he fell to the Dark Side would be the obvious answer. The truth is not the obvious answer. What’s wrong with him goes so much farther back than that it may not have a beginning. Maybe he never really deserved the good family, good food, good times he had. Maybe that’s why they were so brief. He is flawed, he is malfunctioning, he is inherently glitched, there is just nothing else to it. The only way he will ever be something more than that is if he can wield the Light as easily as breathing, if he can become its’ vessel, and then, then he’ll finally be whole. He wants to be whole more than he wants to be alive. The realization doesn’t scare him. Death doesn’t scare him. Who he is, who he’s always been – that’s what scares him. More than that, that’s what he’s ashamed of. He is a mistake he is trying to correct.

“It’s complicated,” he tells his Uncle flatly. _Be less, want less, hate less. Until there is nothing tethering you to your malformed heart._

“I love you,” Han says bluntly, making Ben start slightly and stare at him. Kriffing hell, he looks so lost and confused, like that’s just not possible. “I love you too much to let you get yourself killed. So we’re going to – I’m going to, fix this. As much as I can. And I’m no good with all this, you know that, but I’m going to damn well try. I don’t know how to make this better. But I need you alive to do it. Just… sit down and eat. Try. I’m right here, and I’m not going anywhere.”

It’s true. Han hasn’t taken any flights since he found out about Ben’s meditation practices. The smell of the food is alluring. He is so hungry, so tired, so sick of thinking, that he lets himself sit down and reach for the damn fork. _Weakness,_ something hisses at him from within. _You’re failing at everything. You’re losing. You always lose, Ben._

He wants to eat. He’s wanted to eat for so long. All he has to do is lift the fork to his mouth. This should be easy; after all, he’s been thinking about food for hours each day. The portion on his plate is less than half of that of his father’s. This is not even a full meal. At best, this is a start towards one. Ben tries to remember that, but the food seems to loom, the plate small and the food is just too big and he has a death grip on his fork. One bite, he tries to tell himself, take it one bite at a time, bit by bit, until it’s gone, he managed to get himself into his situation, he can get himself out of it for one evening, for the people that care. The memory of shoving every morsel of that roast down his throat makes him shudder, makes him want to gag. What if he does that, what if he regrets this later, what if he makes himself sick? What will everyone think? What will they say? Uncle Chewie went through a lot to cook this, but oh, Force, people are watching, his family is watching, they’re watching him fail, he’s letting them down all over again. He hates himself, but he can’t hate himself. Hatred is not part of the Light. He needs to go run, go exercise, until all the hate is out of him and he’s a good Jedi again, a good person, someone worth something. He is awful and he is trying but he can’t get the fork into his mouth because it’ll undo everything he’s fought so hard for.

Ben finally weeps, his will not to do so breaking, hides his head in his hands, shame-faced, thinking _I lost I made a mistake **I am the mistake.**_ He repeats this until his father sits down beside him with uncharacteristic gentleness, takes the fork from his clenched hand and carefully gets food onto it, not a lot, but any amount is too much, and how did Ben go from Kylo Ren to someone his father needed to feed?

“Just try with me,” Han instructs him. “We can do this. Don’t think about the whole thing. Don’t think about everything on the fork. Bit by bit, alright?”

His son doesn’t ask him how Han knows that’s a good strategy to get food into him. He’s afraid of what the answer might be. Han might’ve read up on his, he might’ve known someone with some kind of problem, he’s a mystery to Ben after all this time. Maybe that’s what Ben deserves, too. He does his best not to think about it. The first bite tastes so overwhelming he gags. He nearly spits it out. Ben doesn’t want to do this. He can’t. He’s going to lose everything. He’s going to lose his father all over again and he doesn’t know if he can take it, if he can go through that once more and keep living. To get it out of his mouth as soon as he can he swallows mostly without chewing. Uncle Chewie passes him a cup of tea Ben drinks greedily from until it’s all gone, washing the taste of betrayal and his failure out of his mouth. Then the weight of that bite settles in his stomach. Shame and panic compete for dominance. He moves to get up. Han grabs him again. Ben is too thin, too weak, to win. He’s tugged back down to the table. Ben pinches the inside of his thigh to remind himself there’s a gap there, he isn’t _too_ fat, is he? He can do this.

Twelve laborious bites in, he abruptly brings his knees up his chest, wraps his arms around them, and goes completely silent. He cries, but he’s unaware of it. He imagines taking a lightsaber to his stomach to rip out all the food, all the fat waiting to happen, the rocks weighing him down so he’ll drown without ever reaching the Light. He imagines not being born with the Force and Han swinging him in his arms like Poe’s father did for him. He imagines dying in battle and never having to look at food again and everyone being so proud of him at long last they never mention moments like these where he let them down ever again.

Mostly he imagines lying down and never waking up and never having to face tomorrow.

 

* * *

 

Tomorrow comes and finds Ben passed out, sprawled out on the roof where the indents of his boots in the dust indicates he’s been doing laps for Force only knows how long. There’s a suspicious puddle of what’s probably vomit by the far corner of the roof, but crows, disgusting as they are, will eat it up.

He knows his mother is having his trash monitored for food and vomit. He has learned to be excessively creative. Food can be hidden in many places – up sleeves, inside teapots he takes back and ‘cleans’, in pockets, all sorts of places. Opportunities present themselves like openings in a battle. Vomit is significantly trickier. Other than the time Finn tried to cook and everyone other than Rey got sick, there is no way to pass it off as accidental for Ben. He’s made a list of places in his mind now, though. The bushes at the door by the emergency exits, the bucket where the pilots funnel off excess grime from cleaning their ships, the corner of the roof where the birds congregate every morning en masse – he knows if he seeks them out there’ll be more places. The more his food intake is on everyone’s mind, the more he knows he’ll have to use these places instead of just not eating.

When he gets up, he dusts off every inch of his clothes, glad he’s taken to wearing his hair in a dozen braids padawan-style so it stays clear of vomit, and stealthily makes his way back to his room. The key to fooling people is to project an air of authority. If anyone asks, which only one person does, he was trying to meditate on the sunrise and admittedly might have dozed off a bit. He gets to his room, cleans himself up, and puts on new clothes before breakfast is even being prepared. Exhausted, he sits down to read one of the dry Jedi history novels Luke has given him as some kind of attempt at a peace offering. A few pages in his throat bothers him, so he goes to get tea. No one suspects a thing. He is with the Light, he thinks, he can sustain himself on air, water and the Light alone, he is becoming better, remaking himself into a man that can truly be loved. His father pities him now, confuses pity for love, but soon, soon they’re all going to be so proud of him.

He sips tea, he reads, he ignores the guilty way his stomach sounds when it gurgles. Jedi have to deny the flesh and they have to deny attachments. Old Jedi were taken from their parents at an early age. Perhaps that would have prevented yesterday, which was a mistake, a valuable lesson in just how much he has yet to let go of his own attachments to others. It hurts. He wants to be a part of his family. He _needs_ to be a Jedi significantly more. He needs to be less, want less, hate less, until all there is to him is goodness and purity and Light, so as much as he doesn’t want to, he has to do this. These thoughts preoccupy him along with a continual fear his late night excursion will be discovered, his vomit exposed, an uproar caused. All day, he waits for someone to confront him. No one does, and he allows himself some relief in having found a new way to solve the puzzle that is his life.

People leave.  _Han_ will leave. But his body is subject only to his willpower, and nothing else. His bones are permanent. This, he knows.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Firstly, this chapter contains a couple graphic mental images and some frank discussion of the fact Ben canonically murdered all the other padawans Luke had, so if violence against children is a trigger for you, you might want to skip this chapter.
> 
> Secondly, despite this chapter's ending this is not a Reylo fic. I swear it isn't. This fic will remain firmly romance free, on the basis of the fact Ben is not in the right state of mind for romance right now and also not all interactions between members of the opposite sex should equal shipping or a romantic relationship. People can be messed up and care about each other in a mutually detrimental way without romance... which is the least uplifting sentence I think I've ever typed.

* * *

 

It was said that Baridi Sangura once fought in a snowstorm on the icy wasteland of the planet Gohvi and used her connection to the Force to twist and turn herself towards the currents of the wind, becoming untouchable, steady in the face of winds that overturned shuttles, firmly connected to the ground and sky at once.

The snow on the base is nothing so dramatic. After Hoth, Leia had no desire to make any kind of settlement on a snowy world, let alone one that had windstorms on top of the deathly cold. This base has winter, has seasons, but it has summer and a brief winter, which really sounds like ideal Leia weather – Alderaan weather, Ben knows, although he doesn’t say anything to her about it. Alderaan is a wound that never heals. She has always put up a brave face, a stone façade, and Han and Ben have always seen right through it. As much as she’s able to push things aside and keep working, the longing for a place that no longer exists is in her at all times, the dull ache of a formerly broken bone, never to be banished completely. Ben knows it has snowed before he gets a look at the outside because he can sense her melancholy. He leaves comforting her to his father, mostly because his father remembers when Alderaan was an important planet and not an abstract concept. Ben has only seen some holographic projections of it. There’s nothing for him to say.

Besides, as soon as he gets changed into a winter coat, Jessika appears, rosy-cheeked from the cold, beautiful as always, plain beauty, natural like mountains _(no no no Jedi are supposed to be celibate damnit)_ and takes him by the hand, tugging him outside. Rey and Finn are both dressed woefully inadequately for the cold, lobbing snowballs at each other while Poe builds a replica of BB-8 out of the snow. For a moment Ben and Jessika take in Finn’s total joy when he discovers part of the tarmac the pilots land their ships on is now slippery. Rey abandons the snowball fight to join him in the fine art of sliding on the ice, arms flailing wildly to keep her balance. By the Force, they’re both so innocent, so new to something as basic as this, it’s hard to believe the future of the galaxy rests on them, on two shrieking, laughing near-children who have never seen snow before today. Jessika grins at him. Ben knows she wanted him to see this, to let up and stop being so serious for just a moment. Looking at the elation on Finn’s face when he runs, slides on the ice, then tucks into a ball and rolls into the landing like all the world is a playground, Ben has an irrational desire to join them, to be a part of the moment, to be alongside them. Rey’s hair has come partially undone from its’ usual updo; snow sticks to it when she attempts to replicate Finn’s roll and BB-8 makes some comment that has her giggling. Her hazel eyes are alight with joy.

He looks over at Poe, whose snow-BB-8 is shaping up nicely. Jessika goes over to him, holding out several sticks to her fellow pilot. They’re going to give the snow-droid an antenna, which is just _unfairly_ cute. If the First Order could glimpse them now, the assorted Jedi and pilots of the Resistance all losing their minds over snow, he’s fairly sure they would be downgraded as a threat immediately. Ben can feel the moment slip away from him as he makes the mistake of looking up, watching the snow drift down. The night he betrayed his Uncle Luke, the night he solidified his status as one of the great monsters of history, it had been snowing, with ash from the burning remains of the Jedi compound swirling through the air as well, giving a disconnected, thick feeling to the air all around them, Ben and Luke staring at each other, murderous intent lingering in the spaces between the debris and ice. They were opposites, a shadow and a beacon, Dark and Light, destruction and life. Ben wraps his arms around his chest, feeling the hardness of bone under the layers of fabric. He starts walking, sticking to the outline of the tarmac where he can see it through the snow on the ground, eyes flickering to the flakes tumbling down all around him. The air is clean, cold and clear, yet a more vicious cold claws its’ way inside of him.

When he makes his way to the _Falcon_ , he slowly stops, looking it over. It’s coated in a light dusting of snow, powdered over in a way he vaguely remembers from when he was four and tried to turn it into a giant snow fort. Moving snow with the Force had been one of his first tricks. In both snowball fights and the construction of snow forts, he’d had an unfair advantage. His lips twitched upward, remembering tiny Poe getting the jump on him, shoving snow down the back of Ben’s coat before any Force actions could save him. Ben had howled like a dying man, Poe had just about collapsed laughing, and Han was not impressed they’d been playing near the ship after they’d been told not to. They were unrepentant as small children. Back then the galaxy was comprised of wherever they happened to be, whatever they happened to be doing and whoever was nearby. Ben hadn’t known he was broken back then. Poe hadn’t known the galaxy was a cruel, unrelenting place. Everyone had been happier, freer, before Ben had started listening to that nagging voice in the back of his head.

His smile turned into a frown as he knelt in the snow, picking up some of it in his gloved hands. After so long in space, there was nothing familiar about the weight of it in his hands, the coldness that seemed to be gnawing at him. The cold he felt was more from his perpetual hunger, he knew that. It is a cold that made him want to shake, to shiver, to lay down in the snow and rest, one that resented him for shaving off his arm and leg hair (every fraction of a pound counted, he needed to be lighter, and hey, at least no one was monitoring the drain in his fresher). His insides are ice, his head is practically splintering from the pressure of the cold, and on automatic, his hands craft a snowman, a tiny one, the not quite a foot tall ones he used to make and leave in unexpected places. His mother had always been chiding him to quit scaring people by making them move with the Force, even as she bit back a laugh. Maybe he should have stopped. Maybe that was when she began to realize he was a burden she couldn’t deal with. Maybe she only truly got tired of him when he threw icicles at droids, not caring if he hurt them because he was having fun. _That’s a crazy kid’s behavior_ , he thought to himself, hands stilling over the snowman miniature. _That’s what some serial killer in a holovid novel does. No wonder she didn’t want me._ He gets up, kicking the snowman out of existence in one swift move. _I should get back inside._

Out of some instinct he doesn’t fully understand, he goes further away from the base, from the others, instead. Their thoughts and feelings became a pleasant, vague blur in the background. Why was it always so loud inside his head? If he could only shut out everyone, just for long enough to get his bearings, maybe he could pull himself together. How could he see the situation clearly when everyone’s distrust, their flickering, wild emotions, whirlwinds of thoughts were right there, an ocean of white noise? It was a poor excuse. His mother dealt with worse day in and out but Leia wasn’t out here in the cold trying to block everything out. In the cold, his eyes hurt too much to cry. He is grateful for that; Jedi didn’t cry, they stay positive and peaceful. In another life, one where Luke had set up on the Jedi Temple ruins on Gohvi, Ben probably would have been a great Jedi. That was what he needed, for the option of failure to be taken away from him, or else he would fail yet again, the way he always did. His stomach growls angrily at him, shouting at him to do something if he’s going to be out here like this, to at least give it something to process to keep up with the toll the cold is doing on his body, which no longer has any fat to properly shield it from the mild winter morning. He ignores it and keeps walking aimlessly, makes his way to the forest on the edge of the airfield, slips inbetween the trees and unto the uneven ground fluidly.

Ben knows that a body burns more energy, more food, in extreme cold than it does in extreme heat. Though this cold isn’t nearly as extreme as some planets achieve, it will freeze off the heaviness that weighs him down. All those lives he snuffed out that winter night so many years ago haunt him, guilt like a leaden cloak around his shoulders. He would have to be the greatest wielder of the Light in all of Jedi history to make up for what he had done. Those poor children, those innocent kids, just as trapped in the Jedi mantras and dogma as he was, those gentle souls, those confused children – what had he _done_? He begins running, ushered on by the wind, by the desire to go so far into the cold that getting back will take so long it will freeze away every last inch of him, leave only the good, if there is any, intact when this is over. It hurts, it hurts so terribly it’s almost numbing, but it’s okay, he deserves it, he deserves it on behalf of each of them, deserves to live a life more painful than the deaths of those padawans, needs to freeze so intensely it burns, needs to be burnt down to the ground and reformed into someone who can avenge them-

He trips in the snow, landing face first in it, props himself up onto his elbows for a moment, turning his face up towards the sky. All the snow floating down looks like a brighter version of the chaos that fell all around him the night he slaughtered the padawans. He hangs his head, unable to fight back the tears anymore. Jedi aren’t supposed to cry but he’s not a Jedi, now, is he? He’s not sure he ever was. Slowly, he pulls himself into a sitting position, nimble fingers undoing the braids of his hair. He is not a padawan. He is the padawan killer, the murderer, the monster born to angels, and if that’s melodramatic, well, at least he’s not trying to tell his mother or Luke like he did as a small child. Back then Snoke’s voice in his head scared him; he had tried to relay all the messages he was getting in a vain attempt to get them to stop Snoke. All he’d done was push everyone further away. By the time they realized what was happening, Ben was gone, with Kylo emerging in his place aboard a First Order ship. Right now, he doesn’t have Snoke’s voice in his head, or any of his friend’s (he does not deserve their friendship, he tortured two of them and basically owned Finn at one point), or anyone’s at all. For just a moment he’s Ben Solo, a young man, a lost, lonely, hungry disaster of a human being whose mind will always be loud because he can run away from everyone except himself.

He doesn’t understand why he isn’t better. He’s been trying so hard, fasting for so long, working as best he can under the restrictions his family has put on him for his own safety. What is it he isn’t doing? What else can he do to try to tap into the Light? He has those deaths on his conscience, he has people to avenge, people to protect, people to rescue from the First Order’s indoctrination. The galaxy has its’ merciless gaze locked on him. He can’t just pass all this onto Rey and Finn, two more innocent children who never asked for the Force, who have had all this thrust upon them out of the blue. Their lives have been destroyed by his actions, rebuilt by divine Force intervention, he can’t shatter their happiness and freedom by making them the front line of defense against the encroaching First Order forces. They need someone else to lighten the load. He digs his fingers into his scalp just to make it hurt, just to clear his head. What is it here he isn’t seeing? What is it he doesn’t have control of that he can seize to change the tide of this war, internally and externally?

He knows when his parents lost him. He just doesn’t know when he lost himself. He was supposed to be such a great and powerful Jedi even the magnificence of Master Luke would pale in comparison, a tribute to all the progress that had been made since the fall of Vader, a statement on the power of Light over legacies, of choice over inborn evil. Ben had heard his name invoked in speeches by his mother or his uncle many times growing up, had always known he wasn’t like other people, wasn’t allowed to be, was just made differently. Ben is trying to live up to that expectation the right way now. He understands now. He’s a better person now, or so he would like to believe, so he tells himself when some mornings it’s nearly impossible to get out of bed, so he tells himself when he pushes the guilt and pain aside to teach Finn and Rey, who remind him of those he killed. Only late at night do his real feelings bleed through to sully his thoughts. Can a man ever be redeemed from an act as vile as murder, murder of children, no less? Is any of this genuine improvement or an act that he’s putting on to hide the killer nature underneath? He snuffed out lives like candle flames one cold winter night and the cold and fire he set suffocated him, filled up his lungs and poisoned his heart. That action will never leave him. Those deaths will never be undone. If they could be, it would still not be enough. He has taken the lives of good children, good people, people who had endless potential, people who never saw it coming. Is it self-pity to loathe himself for that? Is even his hatred a waste of time? Would a good Jedi work harder than he does, repent completely? Can he ever truly come back to the Light when he locked his hands around a child’s neck and pinned her down after shoving a kitchen knife through a boy’s throat until it pinned him to the wall? Those the fire did not consume, he had personally taken care of.

Ben is evil and he wants to die before he hurts anyone else. He thinks about it late at night, thinks about all the ways he could destroy himself, thinks about how as much as it would hurt, it would keep a lot of people safe from him should he fall back to the Dark Side. At the same time, he has Finn, Rey, Poe, his parents, his uncle, the Resistance to live for. He cannot die yet he does not know how to live. He has too much hate in his heart to be Jedi and too much love to be Sith.

His fingers are digging into his scalp hard enough to draw little pinpricks of blood. He drops his hands to his lap and stares out at the empty forest, considering just running away, but he can’t run from himself. He has no control over that, for all his desperate efforts.

Resolute, he gets to his feet and makes his way back to the base, his sins following him all the way.

 

* * *

 

 

Rey doesn’t knock on Ben’s door, she lets herself in as if they were old friends.

He’s been a wreck for four days now – moreso than usual. Given the state of things, that’s actually kind of impressive. He hasn’t slept, hasn’t eaten, has barely been in his room. He keeps going outside for hours, especially at night, trying to master some long-forgotten kata that involves leaning into the wind and letting nature itself guide him. It requires a total separation of the self from the body, whatever that means; Luke talks to her as if he expects her to understand instantly, but while she appreciates his respect, a lot of the Jedi mysticism is still lost on her. All she knows is that Ben is going mad right in front of her, that he has spent hours moving like a dancer in the snow, muttering to himself ( _be lighter, be the Light, I need the Light_ ) like a madman, hair permanently disheveled and the cordlike muscles of his limbs, what little remains, failing him more and more, causing him to stumble, to slip, again and again and again. His legs and arms are covered in bruises from the impacts, even the palms of his hands an angry purple-red from the smack of the ground when he catches himself. He waited until Leia was away on business and how he’s kept word from getting back to Han, she’s not sure. Most likely no one wants to tell Han Solo that his son has finally snapped completely. Whenever Ben comes in his clothes are soaked with snow, his whole body shivering like a plucked string, before he goes and hits the fresher. His breaks are more out of a need for hydration than anything else, that and a need to put in a mandatory appearance at dinner so Dr. Kalonia can’t technically lock him up like she’s been threatening, though she’s one more night away from doing so anyway and damn the consequences.

At first Rey was angry. The idea of wasting food repulses her. How could anyone do that, when food is so scarce, when people are starving, when she used to lay awake crying because her belly hurt, begged her for what she did not have? She had seen people starve to death, she had raided their houses after news broke in the desert community for pieces of scrap metal and components, and she still did not understand. Those people would have, and some had, killed for the same food Ben pushed around on his plate with no intent of eating. She wanted to punch him repeatedly until she remembered, every time, the moment where she’d been able to look into his mind. He had no friends, no lovers, thought he had no family that loved him, had only goals he was failing to meet and a deep fear of not meeting them, of not being enough. Rey had thought it was Snoke doing something to him, that he would get better once he wasn’t under the man’s influence. Ben has only gotten worse. He knows he has more goals now, more standards he isn’t measuring up to, more things to atone for, and normally she would leave Poe, who has known Ben since he was a child, or Finn, who everyone just instantly liked and trusted, to try to talk sense into him. Since they’re both hesitating in approaching, she’ll do it herself.

They don’t have time to waste. Ben could die here, surrounded by food, by friends, by family. She loves Han and Leia too much to let their son slip away from them like this.

Without a moment’s pause, she yanks open the door to his fresher, where he is huddled on the floor in the corner, hot water pouring over him. She feels the urge to yell at him about wasting water until her brain processes exactly what he looks like without his clothes on. Nausea rolls over her, making her slap a hand over her horrified mouth, bracing herself with her other hand against the door. His too small, too angular, too boney form shakes as if chilled even under the steaming water. Indecent as it may be, her eyes go to his stomach, the concave inward curve, unnatural, with sharp hipbones and thighs she’s willing to bet are the width of her hand obscuring her view of anything indecent. Not that he brain would even begin to register that as something worth noting right now. There are so many bruises, they’re everywhere, his ribcage is like a carcass she might have found on Jakku, already picked clean, and she reaches out and snaps the water off abruptly, trying to quiet the noise in her head created solely of visuals and revulsion. He looks up at her, wet hair covering a surprising amount of his face, looking parsecs away from the man who strapped her down and invaded her mind.

“I can hear you thinking,” he notes, as if saying that will make her any more able to control her thoughts. She would roll her eyes if she could take her eyes off him. Obviously uncomfortable, he tucks his knees up to his chest, making himself even smaller. With no other lead in, he asks, “I hear you the most when we train. So. Do you finally want to?”

“Do I want to…?”

“Get inside my mind. The way I did yours,” he clarifies, making her cringe. “I’ve heard you thinking about it, ‘who-does-he-think-he-is’, ‘how-would-he-like-it-if-I-did-that’. You think too fast to hear the rest clearly, but…” he trails off, shrugging. His collarbones are so sharp, so prominent, she’s staring before she can help it. She feels like she’s talking with a corpse. “It would be fair, after everything I did to you. I have it coming. I won’t tell anyone,” he says when she toes off her shoes to step into the fresher, the wet tiles squelching underneath her feet. “I won’t fight you. You’ve had a lot of Force training, I think you can manage it on your own by now.”

Rey kneels down beside him. She wonders what it’s like to slam through a person’s defenses, right into their head, to be the predator and not the prey. She remembers the feeling of violation, raw hate, pure disgust, all mixed into one unspeakable darkness that never really went away entirely. She can do that to him now, make him helpless, make him be the one unable to stop her as she looks at whatever she wants, takes what she wants. If she wanted to she could sort through his memories like scrap metal. There is a moment, a lengthy pause, where she is ashamed to admit she considers it. Rey isn’t too proud to admit she has a great fear of losing control he had unknowingly made manifest that day. She is ashamed to admit she's thought about hurting him, about what it would be like to make him scream, more than once. Rey reaches out and touches his collarbone. The skin is clammy and cold and something inside her just _breaks_. She cannot do to anyone what was done to her. She couldn’t live with it. All she can sense from Ben is a guilt too powerful to name, and Rey has made many mistakes but taking advantage of someone who wants to die will not, she decides, ever be on that list.

It is frighteningly easy to sit down beside him, ignoring the water seeping into her clothes, and draw his insubstantial body into her arms, cradle him close as if trying to anchor him to the present, as if she can place herself between him and his past. He seems too confused to even respond. Oh Force, he feels frail; she thinks she could break him by holding on too tightly.

“Ben, you’re scaring me, us. All of us,” she tells him, moving to rub his back and nearly gagging at how she can count each ridge down his back. “You have to stop this. Or else you’re going to die.” The word is so heavy she barely manages to say it. There’s finality in it she doesn’t like.

He shrugs in response. Anger flares up in her; she wishes he were healthy so she could slap him.

Rey takes a deep breath, trying to reign in the growing urge to scream. “Why are you doing this?!” she bursts out, with more ferocity than she intended (Rey has always been ferocious, always been able to create her own deliverance, she does not lose fights, will not lose this one). “What do you think you’re getting out of this? What do you think you're accomplishing? Why are you torturing yourself?!”

"I need to be part of the Light," he murmurs, defeated. His eyes are haunted. "I have to be Light. Otherwise, I shouldn't be alive. That's all there is to this."

_That's all there is to **me**._


	8. Chapter 8

Rey waits until Ben gets dressed before they talk.

It’s not that she hasn’t seen people naked before. There weren’t any humans on Jakku besides her, but she’d seen naked alien men. Trading in clothes for food was a last resort that more than one person had come to. The thing that makes her uncomfortable is that those men had, in some cases, less bones showing than Ben does. That concave dip where his stomach should be is too harsh of a reality to look at. She waits for him to get dressed, helps him with the buttons on his coat out of a frustrated need to do _something_ , and then she sits him down on his bed to just look at him for some sign of how to begin.

 All of her life, Rey has lost people. Friends on Jakku died to squabbles and fights and harsh desert conditions. Slavers picked out the prettier ones for trade; she would hide, knowing humans were good enough for some people, basic looking enough to be caught and sold for a profit, only to emerge hours later to find people were gone. She never had a friend who lasted more than six moon cycles, on a planet where the moon was full every forty-two days. She saw people lose their will to live, start a fight they knew they’d die in, go into the desert with no intent to return. Rey has seen so many things that will never fade from her mind that she doesn’t share with other people. All those losses, all that pain and suffering, however, has shaped her. She is the metal that the sandstorms does not erode. She is the one who learned to fend for her life with only a stick. She is the rock mountain in the desert that the sand parts for.

 She is not going to let Ben die. She will not lose another person she cares about. The galaxy itself could not stop her when she felt how light, how little, he was in her arms. Her first instinct is to knock Ben out with a Jedi Mind Trick and haul him to the Doctor on base. As different as they are, though, they’re both stubborn. Rey can’t make him get better. She can’t make him submit to treatment – sure, Dr. Kalonia has been looking for an excuse to lock him away, but that’s not the same as actually shaking off this need of his to be light-like-Light, a phrase that she’s sure makes sense to him. If she were doing something like this and someone tried to make her better by locking her away, she knows what she would do. She would find a way out, a way around the rules, after resisting, throwing a fit and probably breaking something.

That brings up a strange, disquieting thought. Ben hasn’t broken anything since he got here. He hasn’t thrown anything or anyone, hasn’t yelled, hasn’t screamed or threatened or even just argued. Sure, he’s had a few scuffles with his family; that’s not the same as the madman he used to be. All of that anger in him she had sensed aboard Starkiller is still there, if she reaches out with the Force to check for it. Now, though, he isn’t angry with other people. Ben is angry with himself, so angry, hateful even, that Rey has a hard time staying mad at him. Though she’s had nightmares about what Kylo Ren did to her, Kylo Ren is not this man sitting beside her, this gaunt, constantly distressed man who is willing to run up to death’s doorstep for even the smallest taste of the Force. His obsession with the Force has consumed him, has eaten the flesh from his bones and ripped out the hope from his eyes. She saw that hopeless look on Jakku, in the faces of people who had either decided to kill rather than die or die rather than kill.

“Do you want me to do it?” she asks, suddenly. He thinks back to his question in the fresher and doesn’t have to ask what she means.

“Yes.” There’s no hesitation.

Rey takes a deep breath. Poe would be better at this, he’s the social one. Poe is asleep, so she charges on as best she can. “What would that accomplish, Ben? Do you really think that would bring you closer to the Light Side of the Force?”

“Maybe,” he half-whispers, bony fingers digging into the blankets. “Maybe not. I have to try. I have to try everything. I have to – I need to-”

He sucks in a deep breath. She can’t tell if he’s holding back his emotions or overwhelmed by them. It could be both, these days. Rey is used to compartmentalizing, to putting aside the pain of having been left behind or losing someone and focusing on a task. She has learned to live within the moment, without thought of future or past. Right now, these are useless skills. She can’t teach him how to put things aside like she does. She’s not sure it would even be wise to try. Pushing things down, away, is probably part of how people get to the point Ben does, to that walk-into-the-desert-to-die point. What he requires is the opposite approach entirely. He needs to let it all out and because fate or the Force has a sick sense of humor, he’s doing it to someone who he once hated and who once hated him, however briefly. This is their life, these days.

Ben tilts his head so he can hide behind his still wet hair, which is wavy from the time it usually spends in braids. “I need to save the galaxy,” he declares hopelessly. “I need to make things right. There is only one way to do that. For that, I need the Force. All this, it’s for that. If you invading my mind would make me stronger in the Force, then I would let you. I would do anything to become a champion of the Light, Rey. Absolutely anything.”

She takes ahold of his wrist. She can wrap her thumb and forefinger around it and have them touch with room to spare. “You can’t be a champion of anything or save anyone if you’re dead,” Rey gently tells him, not commenting on the absurdity of his goals.

It’s not as absurd as it sounds at first, really. Anakin Skywalker was one man, yet he all but ended the Jedi entirely. Luke, Leia and Han are three people yet they brought down the Empire. It isn’t without precedent for one person to change the course of history. Rey has virtually no idea who her family is; she remembers long brown hair, soft hands, a box of elaborate ornamental combs someone she likes to believe might be her mother put into her hair as she put them up into buns, murmuring soothing words to her. She remembers yelling, some kind of argument that seemed to make the walls of the shuttle they were on ring. Then she was on Jakku and the past was worn down by the sand into a brutal future. Ben has legacies hanging over him. Rey forms her own legacy, makes herself who she is, creates her reputation without the influence of someone else’s name. She understands there’s pressure. What she doesn’t understand is who he thinks is pressuring him into this. Han just wants Ben to stay alive, Leia is afraid in her quiet, stern way that the First Order is going to come after him, and Luke… Luke is never going to demand a thing of Ben ever again.

“Do you know what I did?” he murmurs, turning his head to meet her eyes. They’re glassy and lifeless, doll eyes. “I _killed children_. I _tortured_ innocent people. I tortured _Poe_. I tortured _you_. I was going to have Finn put through disciplinary brainwashing. Don’t you see? All that I have done demands retribution and redemption. This is what I have to do. This is the only thing I have left.”

“Punishing yourself-” she starts.

“I’m not punishing myself!” he snarls, and it’s the first real anger anyone’s gotten out of him since Han got him back. “I’m trying to fix things! I ruined it, I can rebuild it, so long as I have the Force with me I can repair all the damage. All I need is the Force, and I can  _make_ it come to me - I am the one thing in life I can control!”

He throws her off the bed with the Force and a hand gesture, not hard enough to hurt, but she gets the message. By the time she’s on her feet, he looks horrified, mouth open to start apologizing; she holds her hands up in a gesture of peace or maybe surrender. Some part of her is glad there’s enough of him left in that jagged wisp of a body to be the opinionated, frustrated person she knows he is under all this mess. Ben Solo is still here, still a part of this sickness, still a human being under all those layers of Jedi mantras and meditations.

When she leaves, she makes a beeline for Han’s room, ready to take this fight to the next level if it keeps Ben alive. She will go to Han, to Luke, to Chewbacca, to Poe, she will not lose anyone else to the chaotic uncaring machinations of the galaxy.

She’s definitely going to punch Ben when he’s healthier, though.

 

* * *

 

Leia is dreaming, fitfully.

She is dreaming of a young woman with cool wood-brown skin, with darker brown-black hair drawn up into a series of complex braids, sprawled out on the ground in a jungle near a Jedi Temple. It’s a dream, so Leia knows it’s a Jedi Temple just because she does. Under that same logic of things in dreams making more sense than they should, she knows the girl sobbing on the ground is Baridi Sangura, in the in-between time from after she left the Sith and before she was admitted to the Jedi formally. She is already thin, her arms are bruised and shake wildly as she forces herself unto her elbows; she wants to get up but she can’t. Her nose is bleeding. She stares at the Jedi Temple like it’s her last hope. It’s her everything. Painfully, she manages to get to her knees, then to her feet, every action a tremendous effort. She puts one foot into position, twists her leg, moves into the motions of a half-remembered kata, and Leia is terrified she’s going to fall and not get up. The Force is the only explanation for how she doesn’t, how the clumsy motions become smooth, how she begins to dance with empty air gracefully.

The jungle morphs into snow, the day into night lit by the moon. The figure turns and in a blink it is Ben she sees in front of her, trying with a fevered determination to duplicate the forms of the Jedi who came before him. He is going to freeze to death, Leia thinks, he’s going to collapse, he can’t do this, this is insane, and how does he keep getting around security to do this? How is this _that_ important? The bruises from Baridi’s arms are on his, his nose is beginning to drip blood, his fingers curl into the same defiant arcs. Ben’s brow is furrowed like his father’s when they’re confronted with a problem they can’t quite solve.

He falls. His body makes far too little of a sound when he hits the ground. For a moment she sees Baridi again, sobbing in Ben’s place, a lost girl without a mother. But Ben has a mother, he’s different. Only then it’s Ben again as he gets back to his feet, alone even by the Resistance compound, a place he fits in as poorly as a Jedi Temple. His stomach growls and he strikes at it. Leia cries out, reaches out to him; he can’t see her, so he does it again. He sucks in a breath of air and launches himself into the insane dance-kata again. Again and again, he falls. Again and again, she tries to catch him, talk to him, snap him out of it, and she’s not there so she can’t. When he falls the final time, she sees Baridi again, this time older, thinner, laying in the snow beside Ben. She isn’t breathing. Her hair has thinned considerably, her very face is made of jagged edges where once there was softness, her clothes billow out around her since she can’t fill them. Ben tries to prop himself up on his elbows to get up just one more time. Leia falls to her knees beside him and reaches for him in vain. He turns and for a second she has hope. His eyes move to Baridi, though, not Leia, despite their proximity.

He lays his head down in the snow, clasps a hand over Baridi’s lifeless one, and shuts his eyes. The fight drains out of him.

Ben stops breathing, and Leia wakes up crying.

 

* * *

 

Han never really had a father.

He had men who he picked up tricks from, who he emulated or liked, but nobody was permanent. Nobody stayed in place for long. Smuggling was a cutthroat business and he was trying to learn to stay alive. Emotions couldn’t factor into it. He couldn’t look to anybody else for confidence. He had to be confident because of his own talents and then bluff through where that wasn’t enough. When he’d found out Leia was pregnant, he had been quite frankly terrified. At least she wasn’t having twins – Luke could sense life through the Force and was kind enough to confirm that for Han. Even so, the idea of being part of creating and raising a brand new human being was just unfathomable. Han tried asking Chewie for advice, tried to prepare himself somehow. There were so many things he didn’t know about. What if he got something wrong? What was he supposed to do if his kid had Force powers? Han didn’t know a damn thing about the Force, he never had, just that it had proven itself real and that it could be the best thing ever or the worst depending on the person and situation. He was hopelessly out of his depth.

When Ben was born Han was the first one to hold him. Ben had a mess of dark fuzz and big ears and curled up as if seeking warmth. Han had never felt so much emotion in one moment, so much hope, love, responsibility, joy. Leia had pretended not to notice him getting teary eyed as Ben rested against Han and fell asleep, safe and secure. In that moment Han had promised himself he’d be there for Ben. He’d teach him things, he’d spend time with him, he’d do all the things nobody had done for him. And in those early years, he had. When Leia was busy with work he spent time with Ben, teaching him the controls of the ship and letting Chewie teach him how to understand Wookie, regaling him with sanitized versions of some of his old adventures, watching Ben try to figure out how to fix things and feeling a swell of pride at every little accomplishment. As Ben got older, though, he started getting withdrawn. He was never very loud, always a little shy, so maybe that was why Han hadn’t noticed. Mostly he only noticed when Ben did something with the Force he wasn’t supposed to. Ben and Poe had gotten along like a tauntaun and Hoth, immediately hatching schemes, pranking people and trying to smuggle animals into the house. Ben had tried to tame bees with the Force and gotten a bunch of stings for his trouble. The Force was strong in him. Han had thought Ben getting quieter might be because he was using the Force somehow, probably to listen in on people. Hey, it was what Han would have done if he’d had Force powers.

When Ben said he was hearing voices, Leia assumed it was the Force letting him hear people around him. That level of power was terrifying at his age, so she and Han and Luke talked endlessly, in circles, debating the merits of it before sending him to Luke’s to train. Han remembers Ben looked like he’d been slapped when he was informed of their decision. He had clenched his fists at his side and nodded as if he was okay. He wasn’t. Han knows this now, knew it then, but Luke had the Force and Han didn’t and Han just wanted the best for his son, wanted someone who knew what he was doing to be there for him. Han and Leia tried to visit, they really did, as often as they could. Without Ben around, there was a void that he tried to fill with work. Han tried to regale his padawan son with stories on his visits, tried to coax him into talking. Ben slipped away more and more with each month. By the time he was twelve he was getting into fights with other padawans, yelling at Luke, capable of Force feats that had taken Luke years to achieve. None of his accomplishments made him happy. When Han tried to compliment him, all Ben ever said was that Master Luke said his form was sloppy, his control wasn’t complete, he was too emotional, he wasn’t flexible or fast enough. Han barely recognized the angry, sullen and extremely determined, even obsessed, teenager his son became.

Han got drunk for a good two weeks after Ben massacred the other padawans, after Luke left them a lengthy message about sensing another Force user’s influence. By then Leia had gathered enough intelligence to link Snoke to the First Order, had pieced together exactly what it meant that a First Order ship had picked Ben up and left, but by then it was too late. Han knew if anyone else had done what Ben did, he would hate them. He couldn’t hate his son. He didn’t blame his wife. He worried for Luke. The only person he really, thoroughly couldn’t stand in the wake of all that was himself. He drank, he slept, he turned down lucrative smuggling deals, he’s pretty sure Chewie’s the only reason he made it out alive through that time.

If he’d had any resentment, it died the second he saw his son again. So thin, so fast, a sleek small black blur of motion, too elongated and lacking in the sturdy muscles he used to have to be alright. Han knew second chances when he saw them, knew he wasn’t going to get a third chance at fatherhood. This is his second chance. And since he brought Ben home he’s been trying to make sense of this latest Force-induced blight on his family. Sometimes he wishes the Force had never been a part of his life given how it’s screwed over the people he cares most about. Without it, he wouldn’t know these people. It’s a lose-lose situation he’ll have to pull a win out of. He’s done that before, he’s _the_ Han Solo, as Rey lovingly calls him sometimes with both affection and teasing. He just doesn’t know if the stakes have ever felt so high. The galaxy plunging into war feels like nothing compared to the weight of his son’s life.

Rey throws open his door without warning, half soaking wet, looking like she could tell the sea to part and it would listen. “We need to talk,” is her opening statement, so blunt for a moment he’s reminded of Leia in her younger years. “It’s about Ben. He said something to me, we were talking – I think I know what this is about but – what was his childhood like?”

He’s sure that sentence made coherent sense in her head, but it throws him for a loop. “It was good, while he was with us,” he says after a pause to collect his thoughts. “Ben never really took to life as a padawan, though.”

“Then why did he stay with Luke? Why did he want to go in the first place?” She is drawing breath to let loose another barrage of questions when Han cuts her off by answering that last one.

“He didn’t.”

Rey stills. “What?”

“He didn’t want to be a Jedi. He didn’t want to go train with Luke. Leia and I made him. We could… I could, tell that there was something wrong with him. He needed to be with someone who would be able to help him, so I.” He swallows, not liking where this is going. “I sent him away.”

He expects her to slap him, given her own history, given how she’d been sent away to Jakku. Instead, she just looks hurt. Her face asks ‘how could you’ without words. He hasn’t seen disappointment in Ben’s eyes since he got back. He sees it now in Rey’s eyes, a quiet acceptance that _the_ Han Solo, hero of the Rebellion, husband of the legendary princess-and-general Leia Organa, is the kind of man who runs away from his problems. Han won’t deny that he’s done that, been doing that for years, throwing himself into work so he wouldn’t have to face Leia. Leia wasn’t even ever angry with him – he just didn’t know how to deal with the comfort she offered and the loss he felt. After all these years, even in old age, he doesn’t know how to let someone help him. (Maybe that’s another character flaw Ben got from him.)

After the silence gets unbearable, he asks Rey what Ben said when they were talking.

And then it all comes together to make a horrifying amount of sense.

 

* * *

 

 

Ben wakes up to his mother picking him up and carrying him to Doctor Kalonia’s. He’s too sore to fight her off.

She still has one of those dresses on she hates because Leia Organa-Solo has always despised formalwear since she was a child. She must’ve come straight to him from disembarking from her shuttle. Ben can smell Leia’s perfume. Even though she was raised in luxury, his mother favors simple scents without fancy names or dozens of ingredients. Since he was small, he remembers associating her with black chamomile soap, the kind anyone with a garden and spare time could make. Leia always bought things from small shops, supported struggling little businesses wherever she could. Every store boasted ‘the best’ black chamomile soap and sprays and she bought them because it was efficient and the right thing to do. And from the time he was learning how to walk, he would bury his face in her neck, inhale deeply, then know he was safe. This was his mother, his kind, gentle, fierce, altruistic mother who would keep the demons lurking in the back of his mind at bay. He presses his head to her shoulder now, breathing in.

“Mama,” he murmurs, without meaning to. She presses a kiss to the top of his head like he’s five all over again. “I’m sorry. For everything.” He’s too tired, too hungry, to think clearly. “I – I’ll make it right. I promise.”

She shushes him, gently. “You don’t have to do it alone,” his mother tells him.

Leia radiates love and protection, a shield of Light in encroaching Darkness. He lets her take him to Doctor Kalonia’s medbay without a fight. He feels as if he’s watching everything from afar, viewing some holonovel that would have a happy ending, a romance, probably more comedy. His body doesn’t feel like his own. Before she even sets his body down on the medbay table (she shouldn’t be able to carry him, he shouldn’t have lost that much weight and _still be failing_ , he should have become a Force conduit by now) he knows that this is a lost battle. He loves her, he has always loved her, but she has always been afraid of him, of his Force powers, his temper, all the Darkness in him. It infests his flesh, clings to his fat, his useless muscles (the Force will grant him the power to move, he doesn’t need those, he thinks disjointedly), his very DNA, placed into his body before he was fully formed. He is not the son she wants or, quite frankly, the son she deserves. She deserves so much better. Ben knows he can be better if he only keeps going.

So begins his battle against Dr. Kalonia’s attempts to save him before they have even began, a battle to transcend and rise above, to be good at/for something, to be worthy of love for once in his life. They can lay him in this bed and plot together, but they cannot _make_ him eat and surrender all his strides towards the Light.

_I am the one thing in life I can control._


	9. Chapter 9

The Force is in everything. All things are part of the Force. This is the only reason Ben Solo is alive.

Leia is glad Rey rushed to her to tell her about Ben when she got back. Now, the General stands over her son’s sleeping form in Doctor Kalonia’s medbay, Han by her side, listening to the Doctor explain every medical malfunction Ben has wrought upon his body. He has completely burned through his fat reserves. His legs kept giving out on him because the muscle that used to support it is literally being consumed by his body. Ben wants to starve, his body wants food. They cannot both have their way. He wants to push boundaries, it wants to repair damage. Waging war with himself, he has slowed his own ability to heal. The bruises are worse than they would be for a non-Force user due to a lack of nutrients, a lack of anything to draw upon to mend the injuries he’s been incurring. What’s worse, though, is that Doctor Kalonia has only one explanation for how Ben is alive: the Force.

Even if he doesn’t see the Force’s strength in him for what it is, even if in his mind there is either absolute mastery or failure, he has been steadily returning to the Light. The Light never truly left him, really. It is sustaining him through these trials, keeping bones from breaking, organs from being eaten away at, reducing the strain on his heart. All these things are medical miracles Leia is thankful for. She knows, though, that the Force isn’t undoing all that’s been done. There is still noticeable strain on Ben’s heart and there are sores developing inside his mouth from where he’s scraped his throat making himself throw up. There are bruises from things as innocuous as sleeping, his skin unable to take his bony knees clacking together when he shifts his legs. The Force is keeping the worst at bay, but it won’t save him. She runs a hand through her son’s hair and recoils when strands of it come loose. Han wordlessly wraps an arm around her, holding her close.

They don’t have the equipment set up here for a feeding tube. There just hasn’t been a need for it before. He’s hooked back up to an IV again, buried under a pile of blankets. A loss of ability to regulate body temperature was the first sign he showed besides his appearance. Han feels like he should have noticed, should have picked up that something was wrong right there and then. Ben is pale and drifts in and out of consciousness. They’re not sure if he was sleeping on purpose or if he fainted in bed. These days, it can go either way with their son.

“We could transfer him over to the Yavin IV settlement,” Doctor Kalonia suggests, even though there’s doubt in her eyes. “Due to all the veterans living there, they have the facilities to force-feed him until he puts on weight. However, I can’t say I recommend it.”

Leia gathers up her courage, tries to face this like any other battle plan she’s had to look over. “Why is that?”

“Your son isn’t the first person to succumb to this particular illness. Some of the medical records that survived from before the Clone Wars indicate that many Jedi and Sith have gone down this path. I’ve been studying the subject to try to determine other common denominators besides simply being strong in the Force,” she explains, pulling out a datapad. “A lack of a support system, an excessive amount of stress, perfectionism, a perceived need to prove one’s self, competition, depression, absence of normal social bonds, problems with maintaining interpersonal relationships, a need for or perceived lack of control…” Dr. Kalonia stops when Han flinches like he’s been struck. Both women look at him expectantly.

“He said… he said ‘I am the one thing in life I can control’. To Rey, when she was talking to him about this,” he explains quietly.

Leia grips his hand as if it’s the only thing anchoring her to this world. Ben’s entire life had been out of his control since he started to gain Force powers. That was when they’d had to start making a lot of rules to keep him out of trouble. When that failed, they’d taken him to Luke’s, who had given Ben Jedi structure. Jedi structure did not allow for choice. ‘There is no passion, there is only peace’ did not offer Ben the option of having _feelings_ that were not Jedi-approved. More than once he had told them he didn’t want to be a Jedi. He wanted to work with animals, or maybe machines, use his Force talents with both to forge a career for himself. He wanted to go to Manaan and see the underwater cities, he wanted to go to Kashyyk with his Uncle Chewie, he wanted so many things that he was simply denied without a second thought, for his own good, or so they’d believed. That was how Snoke had slipped into Ben’s mind, gotten past his defenses – by offering him control over something, anything, any aspect of his life, his future. A life to shape as Ben himself wanted to, as he would have had the right to had he not been born with the Force. The temptation of having the right to be angry, to get recognition, to not be alone, everything had pulled him towards the Dark Side through the sweet lie that once he turned, he would finally stop being a puppet for others.

Leia knows it’s crazy, but she understands. When her adopted family had tried to form her into a perfect Alderaanian lady, she had fought back every step of the way. Those feelings of being looked down upon took her years to get over. Ben was never allowed to fight back. When he did, he could hear people thinking. They weren’t thinking ‘poor conduct for a princess’ at him, either. They were thinking ‘just like Anakin’, ‘so much like his grandfather’, ‘dangerous’, ‘we can’t trust him’, ‘evil’, ‘scary’. Never ‘person’ or ‘scared’ or ‘alone’. Those were words people only applied looking back on the situation, on the young boy that had been so used to having his life decided for him he hadn’t even objected to being handed over to Luke. His hatred had always been partially for himself. Now all of it is and that’s so scary, so disturbing, to know he’ll push himself until his body gives out just to have the chance to hurt and to be able to say it was his choice.

 _What have we done,_ she thinks, gently touching the side of Ben’s face. He’s cold, unresponsive. She can’t get the dream out of her mind’s eye. “We can take care of some of those factors here. Get him medicated for depression, make it clear he’s not alone, set things up so he has friends like he used to as a boy. Yavin is safer, but he’ll just see it as one more thing we’re not letting him be in control of.”

“But how do we get him to eat?” Han asks. That’s the question they’re all thinking, really. He has no patience for beating around the bush and they don’t have the time to do so at this point anyway.

Dr. Kalonia pauses. “That’s not something I was able to find any data on. The Jedi Council actually banned fasting meditation entirely before the onset of the Clone Wars. They knew it was a slippery slope. We don’t have Sith records, obviously, but cases don’t reappear until that time on their side, either.” She looks at both of them and tells it like it is, without the sugarcoating she might normally give. Nights spent reading up on this drove home to her there is no time for beating around the bush. “The fact of the matter is that people who had this condition didn’t make it. There’s a lot of complex brain chemistry involved, not helped by the Force’s understudied scientific and biological effects. All the records I have are of Sith and Jedi who died from this. It’s my understanding, however, that a padawan or Jedi’s old Master would usually be the one to help them with their recovery.”

They need Luke. That’s not a new revelation. On some level everyone in the know is aware that Luke and Ben need to have a real conversation about everything, one that neither of them walks away from. They need to find some kind of equilibrium between the past and present if they’re going to have a future.

“I’ll talk to him,” Han says, declares really, while Leia carefully tucks a strand of hair behind Ben’s ear, watching the rise and fall of his chest, the only sign he’s alive.

Rey isn’t the only person who can bring people together, after all.

 

* * *

 

 

Ben wakes up to his old Master standing over him, an IV in his arm and the instant alarm generated by the IV outweighs the concern about his Uncle’s presence entirely.

They don’t have records to show if other people used things like this when they were meditating. What if it blocks his connection to the Force? What if he starts losing power? The First Order has to have started militarizing their closer Outer Rim worlds now, an invasion is almost certainly on the way. He can’t just laze about sleeping in the medical bay when the fate of the war is at stake. How could he have let this happen? Why didn’t he fight his mother off? He should have known she would have done this, she doesn’t understand how important this is. There are, counting him, three padawans alive right now. None of them can afford to be taken out of action, out of training, for even a moment.

He has no idea what time it is. Ben’s sure he’s missed his morning routine of running laps by now. He can probably make up for it if he hurries, if he skips his usual resting period during lunch. This doesn’t have to be a setback. The Light is merciful, it is loving, it will aid him so long as he keeps pursuing it. So long as he doesn’t get angry with his mother, with Rey, he will avoid slipping over to the Dark Side again. Anger leads to the Dark Side and he’s the one who messed up anyway; it wouldn’t make sense to be angry with them. That’s not one of the things a Jedi gets to feel and in spite of everything, he truly does still want to be a Jedi. People can return to the Light. The process isn’t easy, but he can do it, he will _make_ himself do it, he will drive the Dark out until all that remains is Light and finally, finally, everything will be okay.

When he moves to try to take the IV out, Luke stops him. Ben’s eyes meet his, noting the tiredness in his uncle’s mind. He can sense it through the Force, he realizes. He can sense people’s emotions with great clarity lately, other than Luke. Uncle Luke usually shields himself from Ben. And why shouldn’t he? Ben’s the monster that killed his padawans, the nightmare that prayed to Vader’s ashes, the demon Snoke named Kylo Ren. He’s still a man who has done terrible things even if he’s given up doing them in the future. For a moment they simply stare at each other, both of them thinking at a parsec a minute, not voicing a single thought.

What can Ben say to him that will even begin to cover what he’s done? He settles on, “I’m sorry.”

“I am, too.” Luke shuts his eyes for a moment, looking his age for once. “I was too harsh on you. I was not the Master you needed me to be.”

“You were trying to keep me on the right path,” Ben argues, not sure _why_ he’s arguing. A younger him would have loved to have had Luke apologize. “I do not blame you for anything.”

Ben can’t feel the normally acute pain in his stomach. Nothing has ever been so distracting. How much nutritional supplements can be put in an IV? He resolves to do his laps without his coat on and let the cold make up the difference. Extreme temperatures always burned more calories, more energy, as the body struggled to compensate for the difference between the environment it should have been in and the one it was actually in. He’s down, but he’s not out. He can keep moving, keep cold, until everything they put into his system is forcibly expelled. He can run all day if he has to. He will embody the Light, patient and calm, angerless, focus on his breathing until he can feel the Force breathe in and out of all living entities as he was taught to before he fell to the Dark Side. From the ashes of Kylo Ren he will emerge just as pressure forms coal into diamonds, sharp and clear and powerful. Then he will set everything right. All he has to do is figure out how many meals to avoid in order to make up for this. He swears he can see his arms already getting thicker from the IV, which is an insane thought because it’s just water, but it feels real to him. He’s going to have to redouble his efforts, just until his next breakthrough, until the Light graces him with its’ presence, until he’s worthy of easing back a bit.

Not eating is like a game, albeit one with very high stakes. How many ways can he avoid and outrun attempts to put food in front of him? How many ways can he work and burn through what he does eat? How long of a record can he set for himself where he goes without eating? How few times can he cave in to the demands of this physical body that is trying to fight against him, against the Force? The seduction of the Dark Side is in food, in juice, in the relief the IV brings, in all things except water, whispering lies to him that one time won’t hurt, one bite won’t ruin anything, one sip of the snowberry juice in the kitchen is okay. Winning comes in understanding these are lies, these are deceptions meant to reset his progress back to zero, to put fat inbetween him and the Force. The Force is the only thing that matters. His Force powers determined the course of his life from the very beginning, marked him as Anakin’s second coming, made his parents send him to Luke’s, throwing him away as far as they could in an attempt to distance themselves from the growing Darkness. If he doesn’t get the Light to course through him, cut through the anger like a river cuts through the land, then how long until they can’t stand him again? How long does he have until the evils he’s done become too much for them to deal with? The game now has a clock counting down rapidly that he can’t see. He has to outpace it.

“You know,” he huffs out to Uncle Luke, more confused and exasperated than angry, “I would think you would understand what it’s like to have to shape up quickly. Your training with Master Yoda was some of the fastest in Jedi history.”

“I was stupid and the Force managed to save me,” Luke says. It’s so unlike anything Luke has ever said Ben’s mouth falls open out of shock. “That things did not end in disaster due to my actions is a miracle. You are not in the same position as I was. Finn and Rey are greatly talented young people and they will be able to take up the call to action when it comes. The Resistance has mounds of intelligence from your time in the First Order that the Rebellion never had against Vader. My self-imposed exile gave me time to chart deep regions of space where the First Order thinks we know nothing. Your mother has been working with planetary governments individually to gather support since the destruction of the Hosnian system; the Resistance is growing larger and larger and the Republic might actually go to war against the First Order due to sway by public opinion. There are protests in the streets of the current capital planet calling for as much. In my youth, there were maybe a dozen protests like that. They were tiny and no one listened. That was then, this is now. Everything no longer hangs solely upon which side has the most Force power.”

That’s the most Luke has said at once since Ben was a teenager training under him. Immediately, Ben reaches out through the Force to try to sense any hint of exaggeration or untruth from his uncle. Luke isn’t dishonest, it all sounds too good to be true. Nothing ever goes right for Skywalkers; he can’t picture the war as anything other than brutally one-sided, loss-heavy and a repeat of what happened with Vader. Luke opens his mind to his startled nephew and lets him see, the protestors, the groups of dignitaries that have been sending Leia messages or making their anti-First Order stand known, the crown princess of Manaan arguing with her own people to end the five thousand year long Law of Neutrality they’ve operated under. The galaxy does not want to see the second coming of the Empire. They don’t want to bury their brothers, sisters, children, parents early. And thanks to what happened before, they know that pacifism and neutrality will not spare them. The Hosnian system was supposed to be a crushing display of power. Instead, it’s ignited raw fury in people throughout dozens of systems. Parents are ready to kill for their children, young adults who grew up on horror stories are turning to the Republic to demand protection if not active offense.

Why can’t Ben be comforted by that? He knows he should be. He knows he should let himself rest, that Rey and Finn are strong Jedi even half-trained, and things aren’t as bad as he thought. He can see it. What he can’t see is what his purpose is if he’s not a Jedi, not in training to be one, not doing _this_. Why does he even exist if not to fight? His entire life has been combat training. _Is this how Finn feels?_ Ben asks himself. _Is this what it was like to leave the First Order for him? There isn’t anything else I know how to do. What else am I good for?_

Luke chokes back emotion audibly. Ben realizes belatedly that his mind is open for his Master to read. For once he doesn’t shove his defenses back up. He didn’t think anything Luke wasn’t already aware of. Ben has always been a weapon. At that thought, the Jedi Master takes a step back, one hand going to his temple to rub at a visible headache.

“No, Ben,” he sighs, “You aren’t. You are so much more than a weapon. You’re family. I care about you.” _For as long as I dwell within the Light-_ “No, I always cared about you, even when you were part of the Dark Side.” _I was Anakin and you hated it._ “That’s not why! I failed you and all my other students, Ben, I failed you _as_ Ben Organa-Solo, because I was thinking too much about the past and possible futures. I wasn’t there in the present like any of you needed me to be. I can’t make it up to the other padawans. But we can fix this.”

“I _am_ fixing it!” Ben snaps, eyes narrowing to a glare. “I’m finally doing everything you ever wanted me to! Why is that not good enough? What else do I have to do for you?!”

He’s yelling, his fists are clenched, his nails digging into his palms. The pain dances through his veins and reminds him he’s alive. He is alive despite all the odds, he’s here with his uncle despite all logic, so they’re having this fight now, even if they wake up the entire compound doing so. Ben sucks in a breath and sits up straighter, ready to launch into a tirade. His mother makes people listen. He’s mostly Vader, but he’s got a bit of her in him too, right? He can do this.

“I never thought you were Vader!” Luke half-shouts, which for a Jedi Master might as well be flipping a table in terms of aggression. “I never thought you were him, I thought you were Anakin – angry, alone, overwhelmed. Human and trying to keep your head above water when the Force was too much for you. I pushed you too hard, I know that now, but I was only trying to make sure you didn’t drown!”

Ben is on his feet now. “You never listened to me about Snoke being in my head! Every night he was in my head, in my dreams, and you were too busy to care! I tried to get you to help me for years! I was more alone with you than I ever was on my own. I was less human with you than I ever was even as Kylo Ren. You never saw me as _any_ person, Anakin, Vader or Ben. I was a mistake you kept making! I was a weapon of the Force, a lightsaber you were building! All I ever wanted was to have one person treat me like I wasn’t a dangerous animal! You were the one holding me under the water, you don’t get to be surprised I drowned! You can’t save me now – you couldn’t save a child then, and you didn’t even have the decency to kill me when I asked you to! We could have avoided all this if you’d just used your kriffing lightsaber that night!”

In contrast to his nephew’s near-hysterical yelling, Luke is clearly sinking into despair and horror the more Ben talks. “You were a child! I couldn’t just strike you down!"

“Of course not,” Ben spits, his dark hair falling into his eyes as tilts his head to glower down at his uncle. “You couldn’t let me have a _moment’s_ relief even then. So now that I finally found my way to the Light Side, now that I can finally feel good about something, you have to take _that_ away from me, too! What did I ever _do_ to you to make you hate me this much?!”

“I _love_ you,” Luke half-whispers, eyes filling with tears. Ben can’t bring himself to regret making his uncle cry. He’ll regret it later, but right now he’s fighting for what’s his, for his very right to make his own decisions. “You’re going to kill yourself if you keep doing this.”

“Good.” He doesn’t even pause before saying it. “All I’ve ever done was prepare to battle and die in combat, I’m ready for it. It doesn’t scare me. You made me a weapon, _Master_ , don’t be surprised I want to go into battle even if it kills me.” _I am good at/for something then._

They stare at each other for several long, excruciating moments before Luke pulls Ben into a hug. The embrace is unexpected, inexplicable, really. He’s too stunned to pull away. Rey hugging him was weird enough and she actually half-likes him. This is surreal. Luke can get one arm entirely around Ben’s torso, feeling the ridges and dips of ribs against his arms as he clutches him tightly. He can feel his anger slip away, his self-righteousness abandon him. He remembers for a moment being very small and being held by Uncle Luke, back when he was a person, back when he wasn’t a piece in this galactic game of sabbac. He knows he used to look in the mirror and see a person. When he looks into the mirror these days he sees combat advantages and disadvantages with Anakin’s angry eyes. He is a malformed thing that has never been a true human being to most people. He’s got a list of things he is first and foremost – grandson of Darth Vader, Force user, lightsaber wielder, padawan of _the_ Luke Skywalker. Everything he has always been has been in relation to his Force abilities or his lineage except this. This, this is his own doing. This is his own craftsmanship. This is who he is, Ben the non-eater, the redeemed, the one who chose to reject the Dark Side, the one who is seeking to better himself, the _person_.

He loves Luke, too, even after he spent the last few minutes berating him, but he can’t let Luke take this from him. Otherwise there is no ‘him’ at all.

“I’m sorry,” Luke repeats as he holds Ben, who looks away to deal with the guilt stabbing him in the chest. “I’m so sorry.”

“So am I.” He shuts his eyes and reluctantly lets his arms wrap around his uncle to return the hug. Is this what normal people do with their families at his age? He has no idea if adults hug each other. His memories of family are of early childhood. There are many things he doesn’t know thanks to the life he’s lived. Luke never hugged him as a padawan. All that mattered was the Force and training. The days of being held and told stories about the war were over the second his parents dropped him off. “But I can’t stop, Master. I don’t know how,” he admits, and it scares him, honestly, how true that is, how this has quickly become his everything, his very identity.

“Nobody can make you change. You have to want to,” his Master replies simply. “You have to be willing to try. We’re all here for you if you do. Your mother, your father, Rey, even Finn, though he’s not sure how to show it, and Poe, as much as he’ll act like it’s nothing.” That gets a small smile from Ben, a sad one. Poe had been playing it cool since he was able to walk. “You aren’t alone anymore.”

Ben’s stomach rumbles. He expects Luke to pull away, but his forgiveness, his love, is stronger than whatever revulsion he’s feeling. “I don’t know how,” he repeats to his uncle, feeling and sounding like a confused child.

Luke pulls back to look him in the eyes. His blue gaze is familial and gentle. “No one’s asking you to do anything other than try, you know.”

Ben can still glimpse images from his mind. His anguished parents, his worried father, scared mother, his friends talking about him in hushed tones, his Uncle Chewie trying to support Han and not knowing how to help. It occurs to him suddenly that none of these people are as ready to see him die as he is to do it himself. He doesn’t know why they care about him. He’s done awful things, is actively doing a new awful thing daily to try to make up for the past. He made each of them miserable in one way or another. And he feels like even the idea of trying to stop this now sounds exhausting, impossible, even, but he thinks of his father on the bridge in Starkiller pleading for him to come home and his shoulders slump.

“…I will. I don’t know if I can do it, but… okay. I'll try.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for this chapter's weak ending. Family problems are taking up a lot of my time, so this chapter is not as polished as I had hoped it would be.

* * *

He doesn’t understand why he feels so guilty.

It wasn’t even that big a meal. That’s what’s getting to him, on one level, the fact that it was just a bowl of stew, nothing particularly heavy, not even a full bowl. Ben knows he has to eat. He’s failing at achieving his much sought-after breakthrough so he’s giving up, maybe temporarily, to try to be someone who doesn’t worry his parents and friends. As much as he expected eating to be impossible, he put food in his mouth and got it down. He is keeping it down, even though the temptation to get it to come back up is so intense it’s like an ache. Why is it tempting, though? Why throw away how relieved everyone is? They were all content and calming down and relaxing and he felt their concern, their love, in the Force. He should be proud of at least reducing some of the emotional damage he’s caused.

Mostly he feels tired instead. Defeated, he lays awake trying to make sense of how much this hurts. This is not the sharp hurt of anger or insult. This is the hurt of condemnation, finality, the hurt that comes from total failure at something. Ben knows a lot about failure. With Luke nothing was ever good enough to count as a success as his padawan; with Snoke, there was only failure or glory, no middle ground. When he failed in mastering a kata or in attempting a new Force ability, he would go over it in his head until he found the flaws and tried again. He has failed at something but whether it’s his attempts to reconnect with the Light or control his life or just exist at all, he doesn’t know. In theory food is energy. In practice, he has been laying here for two hours feeling morose, wanting to disappear, to vanish off the face of the galaxy, to go back in time and not eat. He does not understand or know why. He isn’t sure it’s worth trying to figure out.

Ben honestly thought it was going to be simple. If he could willpower his way into this mess, he could willpower his way out. Things were supposed to work like that. He was supposed to be a Skywalker by heritage, after all, capable of doing anything if given time and incentive. He was wrong. Shutting his eyes again in a pitiful attempt to get to sleep, he can feel his full stomach acutely. His brain says ‘victory’. Something deeper says ‘weak’. He wants to ask what all this is even for except he knows it’s for his parents, for the people who care about him (despite how little he deserves it). Ben knows this is supposed to be the right thing to do, the smart thing, and he has never hated everything quite the way he does right now. In this moment there seems to be no future he can endure. A lifetime of dealing with this much apprehension before a meal, all that effort during it, all this overwhelming bleakness afterwards? He can’t do it. He can’t even picture the next meal. All he wants to do is give up utterly and hand this life over to someone else, someone who actually wants Force powers and a destiny and would know better than to make the mistakes he did.

One half-day into this, he’s already… Ben can’t come up with a word for it. It’s every negative emotion imaginable, but coated with layers of exhaustion, a bit of detachment, an outward appearance of numbness that belies the incredibly forlorn nature of his thoughts. Everything is muted, dulled, distant. He can’t even bring himself to move. There’s no reason to. From far away, he observes the thrum of activity of the world around him in the Force. People are loving, living, hating, hoping, fearing, making things, planning, laughing, talking, and none of it means anything to him at all. They are as unreal as figures in a holonovel might be.

 _Sometimes,_ he’d told Master Luke once, _I don’t feel real._ He had been eleven and trying to explain why he had gotten into a fight with another padawan. Getting punched felt real. Hurting was what _people_ did. Luke hadn’t understood. If Ben goes to him now he will not understand any more than he did then, won’t be able to make sense of whatever it is that is so deeply wrong with his nephew. Food meant to energize and sustain has led to lethargy and loss. This is going to be the death of him. Does he care enough to try to ask for help again now, as an adult? They’re not going to help. No one listens when he tries to go over this. Maybe dying might be easier in the end. He’s already parsecs away from the world of the living anyway, after all.

Unable to summon up the energy to get up and end his life, he lays in bed until sleep comes to him, only guilt penetrating the deep fog of his thoughts.

 

* * *

 

 

Ben doesn’t seek out Poe so much as he stumbles upon him with yet another stray droid lovingly rescued.

Poe had always been invested in other people, animals and droids less fortunate than him. He’d coaxed all sorts of animals into his house as a kid. Ben had been involved with some of that, especially once Poe realized the Force could be used to make animals less afraid. Ben had wanted pets because they were friends who never talked about his grandfather. Poe’s reasons eluded even himself beyond ‘why not?’, a phrase that he had used to explain the adoption of dozens of animals and droids over the years. When they were younger people let them get away with that as an excuse for the most part. Ben has no idea why Poe still takes in strays, though he’s grateful the era of snow skunks and flying squirrels is safely behind them. Ben liked animals because they made him feel less lonely, but Poe has plenty of friends. Almost everyone seems to know Poe and those that don’t still know the name. Every pilot Ben has met has their own ‘the time when Poe…’ story. About as many have ‘the time I asked Poe out’ stories, usually ending in some variation of ‘so it didn’t work out but we’re still friends’. There’s never any resentment Ben can feel in the Force in these people for Poe. He wonders how much there’d be for him if they knew exactly what he’d done to Poe aboard the _Finalizer_.

The latest addition to Poe’s ever-growing collection of droids is a cheerful mouse droid with a missing optical lens. It chirps out a greeting to Ben, oblivious to the way Poe tenses up. Ben makes a little chirp back at the droid, a trick he’d learned from the Dameron family as a child, and the droid seems pleased, in its’ own way, as Poe picks it up off the ground to hold it like a baby. Kes Dameron has been not-so-subtly hinting he wants grandbabies to anyone who will listen. _If only droids counted,_ Ben thinks.

“Hey,” Poe says, nodding at Ben a bit awkwardly. The mouse droid beeps its’ equivalent of ‘who is that’, to which Poe answers, “This is Ben. Ben, this is… we haven’t figured out a name yet. I’m thinking Taevas.”

Ben’s brow furrows. “After the Jedi Master who was able to summon animals to his aid? Did Luke tell you that story _again_ , or have you just never forgotten it?”

“Both. If I ever develop a latent Force ability, I’m getting a hawk,” he shrugs, still tense. Biting his lip, Ben takes a step back, trying to fold himself up into the shadows in a way that makes him as small as possible. To his surprise, Poe clears his throat and approaches instead of leaving. “Do you mind coming back to my room with me? I want to talk to you, but the third-shift pilots will be getting back soon and I don’t want them to see us and get any weird rumors going.”

“Like the rumors you’re dating my mother that went around after she hugged you that one time?” Ben can’t help a grin at Poe’s horrified expression. “Jessika told me that one. Rey doesn’t find it very funny, though. She was about ready to challenge people to a duel over your honor.”

Poe winces, leading the way towards his room. He has a single room, unlike many pilots, due to both the fact he’s saved their lives and no one wants to deal with his repairing whatever droid he’s found this week in the dead of night, especially if it's a seagull droid with a revenge complex like That One Time. Jessika told Ben that story too, when she sat beside him at lunch, with a conspirational smile and a twinkle in her eyes. Ben finds having someone there to distract him from the act of eating makes it a lot easier. Besides, she gave him a small box of her homemade rock candy. He hasn’t worked up the courage to eat any of it yet, but the fact that she gave him any kind of gift is profoundly touching. Some part of him remembers Phasma bringing him a tray of food and hates how he treated her; she was trying to help save him from his madness, and he had only seen it as a threat to his power. Halfway across the galaxy, it is too late now to apologize to Phasma. What he _can_ do, what he’s trying to do, is see people’s actions for what they are. Jessika giving Ben candy is her way of saying ‘I hope you feel better’ because all she knows is that he was in the medbay yet again and he isn’t putting on weight. Poe wanting to talk to Ben is his way of saying ‘I have a lot of reasons to dislike you but I won’t let you be the subject of the entire base’s gossip’ and that respect is immensely humbling. In spite of everything, Poe Dameron has remained the same gentle, kind person that Ben knew him as all those years ago.

“Sometimes,” Ben admits to the pilot as they walk, “I wish you’d been the one born with Force powers. You would have made an incredible Jedi.”

He snorts in response. “I’d have to break the Jedi Code. Can you really imagine me not dating someone?”

“You aren’t right now,” the former Jedi replies, though rumor on base has Poe paired with Rey or Finn in equal parts. Most people had no inkling what a gossipy group pilots were, especially if they flew together regularly. Han was a pilot as well as a smuggler, so his son grew up understanding that everyone in the entire career field has a story about everything. Mostly Ben’s just grateful the rumors involving his mother have come to a halt ever since he got back; it’s hard to make up stories of infidelity when Leia and Han bicker amicably and she leaves her room to go sleep aboard the Falcon with him regularly. “Besides, there actually was a time where that wasn’t a steadfast law among Jedi,” he adds, to keep uncomfortable silence from descending. “In the old days, many Jedi had families. Sometimes with each other, even, which probably made marital spats quite an event.”

“Having seen your mother throw things with her mind – yeah, I would not marry a Jedi, even if that was allowed,” Poe shudders mock-dramatically. “While we’re talking Jedi stuff, how come you, Finn and Rey aren’t wearing robes like Luke?”

“We’re at war, Poe. Training first, robes later. Besides, those have to be sewn by hand. There aren’t any seamstresses here,” he points out, continuing to watch Poe’s tense shoulders, the grip he has on the mouse droid, the undercurrent of unease that’s there. This should just be their normal banter.

But it can’t be normal. They can never go back to how things were, and it’s all Ben’s fault. He tries to keep the pang of guilt from showing on his face.

When they get to Poe’s quarters, Ben isn’t surprised to find that there are spare parts and a half dozen slumbering droids there. Poe has never met a lost cause he didn’t save. The same goes for his missions, really, a string of victories from the jaws of defeat. Even aboard the _Finalizer_ , his mind had constantly been working, seeking ways out of the grip the First Order had on him. There is a well of hope in Poe Dameron that simply cannot run dry. He forged his hope in dire times and it is stronger than the will and anger of a thousand Sith of old. For all that, though, Poe is still a person, vulnerable, hurt, incapable of shrugging off as much as he acts like he does. Ben _tortured_ him. He has no rose-tinted view of what a monstrous violation of Poe that was, what a sick, twisted thing it was to pilfer through this mind, destroying any sense of privacy or boundaries he had, pulling out what he needed without a single thought as to the aftermath.

Ben looks at the row of holophotos of Poe’s family and other pilots he’s friends with. He’s met most of these people by now. They’re good people, goofy, caring, dedicated, willing to put their lives on the line for what they believe in. They were the original core of this Resistance, before it was remotely popular in the galaxy at large to support such an endeavor. Poe is a hero who is friends with other heroes. The galaxy needs new legends like what he will eventually become. They need beacons of bravery like the pilots. No one needs Ben. There are enough weapons in the galaxy as it is, without bringing an unstable one into the Resistance’s armory. Not for the first time, Ben contemplates dying, to keep them all safe. He’s already hurt Poe, but he could at least make sure he never hurt him again by removing himself from the equation. His eyes fall upon a picture of the Dameron and Solo families gathered together, back when he and Poe were seven. He reaches out to pick it up, studying the face of a younger Poe, one whose eyes didn’t contain ghosts accumulated over the course of a war that really had only just truly began in earnest.

“Hard to think that used to be us, huh?” Poe asks with false levity.

The once-Kylo Ren hangs his head. “I’m sorry. But as I know an apology does not even begin to cover how I have ruined your life, I… I want you to know if I could go back and do things over, I would do them differently.”

Watching his former friend and once torturer put the picture down, he has no idea what he’s feeling. Neither of them do. “Rey said you offered to let her torture you.”

“That offers extends to you,” Ben says automatically, the shame of what he’d done making him silently pray Poe actually takes him up on the offer. He wants someone to give him exactly what he deserves. He wants the world to make sense. “Although without the Force, I think we may need to improvise some things. It’s my understanding that my father has spare vibroblades on his ship for emergencies he can’t talk his way out of. I doubt he would notice one missing.”

“…you’re being serious right now, aren’t you?” he half-asks, appalled. “Kriffing hell, Ben, I don’t – do you really think that’ll make me feel better? Do I seem like that kind of guy to you?”

Ben folds himself into one of the chairs in the room, pulling his knees up to his chest, trying to gauge the proper response. “No, you don’t, but I have nothing else to offer you. There isn’t anything else I can do to set this right. What I did was so disgusting it might have been more merciful if I had followed orders and killed you. You have every right to be angry at me. It isn’t wrong to want some kind of closure regarding the man who tortured you.” He stares at the floor, at the ragrug Poe had brought here with him from home. His mother had made it, back when she was alive, weaving scraps and discarded fabric into something soft and colorful for her son to have. How awful the dull darkness of the _Finalizer_ must have seemed by comparison.

Stepping silently closer, Poe kneels down to look Ben in the eyes. His face is scrunched up, thoughtfully. “You were ordered to kill me?”

“It was a standing order for all Resistance members,” he replies tonelessly. There’s enough evil in that sentence to condemn not just Ben but the entire First Order.

“Okay. So, why didn’t you kill me, then?”

He opens his mouth to reply. No words come. He shuts it, falling silent for a disturbingly long length of time. Poe is patient, standing beside him, leaning against the wall watching Ben attempt to find a reason he can voice. Eventually he settles on, “I used to… when I was younger, when we were, I already knew people didn’t like me. I could hear people think about my grandfather and how much I was like him every time I got mad or sad or expressed anything they didn’t like. You were different from the start. When we were out doing things like trying to catch flying squirrels or make treehouses out of leaves, you never thought about my family once. I was never Vader-the-Second to you. I was never evil for crying or yelling. I wasn’t a bomb about to go off. I was just… I don’t know. Real. A person. It was like there wasn’t anything wrong with me. And when I was training with my uncle, when I was surrounded by people pointing out all the things wrong with me, sometimes I’d remember you and feel a little less like a thing and a little bit more like a person. I couldn’t – I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill you. I had the droids try to get through to you first because I wasn’t sure I could hurt you.” He snorts, a sort of verge-of-hysteria sound. “Of course, I did. I always do. There’s no line I won’t cross eventually. Just like Vader.” 

“Vader would’ve killed me,” Poe shoots back, taking a very deep breath before pinching the bridge of his nose. “You’re not – is that what all this is about? Showing Rey and I you’re not him? Because we knew that around the time you actually had the heart to change sides and ditch the First Order. If you were actually evil, you’d have stabbed your father or something and kept on doing whatever else they wanted you to do.”

Ben shudders, but doesn’t reply.

Gently, his childhood friend places his hands on the sharp shoulder blades four months of starvation have developed. The touch is identical to what Poe would do as a little kid when he had an idea he wanted to tell Ben. For a moment, when he looks up at Poe, Ben feels like the awkwardness of all those years melts away. “You’ve never been evil to me. You’ve never been Vader to me, even in the knock-off mask and doing the voice. I can’t fix everything, but Ben? You wanna do something to make me feel better? Quit torturing yourself. I’ve lost enough people to the war without adding my best friend to the body count, alright?”

“But I’m _not_ -”

“Nope, you _are_ still one of my best friends. If I give that up and hate you, then Snoke beat me. If you give that up and hate you, Snoke beat you. We’re not giving him that victory, Ben.”

 _It’s not that simple_ , Ben thinks. Then he sees the determination burning like jet fuel in Poe’s eyes, and for the second time in two days, he thinks, _maybe I can try._

 

* * *

 

 

Trying is exhausting. Trying makes every single moment drag by.

Sometimes he doesn’t try. Sometimes he doesn’t have the energy to, doesn’t have it in him to do anything other than sleep or go through the basics of meditation. He is drifting, floating far away from all of this, this life that feels so foreign and unlivable. Without the pain of hunger to ground him or the pounding of the Force through his legs to keep him from toppling he is steadily slipping away from himself, into some unknowable void. He barely wants to do anything, say anything, food going in at least once a day in a vain attempt to keep the peace. Once again, he’s trying to do everything people want him to. He’s failing. History is repeating itself and his stomach rumbles, angry, at every bite he puts in it. Ben can feel himself decaying. That’s the word that echoes in his head repeatedly, decay, as certain and inescapable as the word ‘failure’ is. He throws all his willpower into forcing at least lunch into himself. Just like when he was a child, nothing is ever enough. Lunch – but what about breakfast? Dinner? Snacks? Dessert? Someone is always pushing something at him, always offering tiny portions in vast quantities.

On the sixth day he scrapes his knuckles raw forcing himself to throw it all up, heaving, frantic, _I’m dying I’m dying I can’t do this MAKE IT STOP_. The relief is immediate and profound. He feels lighter. The Light is closer. The Force keeps him steady as he cleans up after himself. Alright, he can do this. He can just do this once or twice, until he figures out how to eat without getting depressed afterwards. He’s not going to do this after every meal or anything. Ben isn’t sure he could imagine anyone wanting to make this a regular event. He’s just going to think of it as a backup for when things are bleak enough he wants to die. As much as he knows his parents wouldn’t want him sick, they need him alive. Better that he throw up in the present than kill himself in the future. He’s sure that he can keep this under wraps. Nobody ever has to know. He’ll be over it before it’s even really a thing.

To keep his mind off of it, he gets to work at Jedi training. Luke is letting Ben join Finn and Rey in training sessions now; a lot of it is relearning the basics for him. He’s grateful. Maybe this is what he needs, maybe not, but either way, he can help Finn and Rey out with what he recalls. They talk enough to stop being utterly dysfunctional. He meets with his mother regularly to go over plans for fighting the First Order and always ends up being subject to hugs and hair ruffles (“You really ought to get a haircut,” she says repeatedly, to which he always replies, “I have your ears; long hair is my only option.”) that he has craved for years. He, Rey and Finn help Poe and the other pilots out with repairs where they can, though more than the others, Ben ends up aboard the Falcon marveling that this thing is even able to get airborne, let alone leave orbit. His father doesn’t spring any Wookie cuisine on him again. Ben doesn’t bring it up. Uncle Chewie keeps an apologetic distance, but Ben isn’t angry with him. Even though it’s not the truth, ‘just eat’ sounds like it should be. One day it might be, if he keeps trying. He thinks he’s keeping down more than he throws up. It certainly feels that way. If he was losing weight or backsliding, someone would notice and take him aside and stop him, right?

Right?


End file.
